St. Mary's Lax Book

C. Mason “Daffy” Russell 1965 - 1976 St. Mary’s Lacrosse at the Brink The Story of the 1965 Saints and Coach Daffy Russell By Albert “Buz” Winchester III ‘65 - 1965 Saints’ Captain and MVP The autumn of 1964 was a pivotal point for the St. Mary’s lacrosse program. There were only two seniors from the 1964 team, and the coach from the previous season had departed. Sister Grace Marie, the high school principal, called me into her office a few days following the “academic cuts” from the football team, of which I was one of those athletes, and informed me that I would be unable to play lacrosse in the spring unless we could find a new coach and raise money to support the lacrosse program. The 1965 lacrosse season would be cancelled. I was stunned. I told Sister Grace Marie that given my most recent academic performance, lacrosse was the only way I was going to be able to get into college. The savvy good Sister Grace Marie didn’t miss a beat and said, “Well, it looks like you’ve got a lot of work to do young man. Now get back to English class!” Improving my grades was no problem. I was the classic underachiever. I hadn’t cracked a book since the last day of classes the previous academic year. By the next marking period, I had raised all of my grades to “A” except for typing (I still can only type using my two index fingers). The problems of finding a coach and raising money to fund the team posed a more difficult dilemma. The city of Annapolis in those days was a different place than it is today. The population was so small that everyone either knew everyone else or knew someone who knew everyone else. If you knew a Greek, he or she knew all of the other Greeks. The same went for the Jews, the Italians, the Blacks, and all of the other ethnic groups. Scout troops and youth teams were the mixing bowls for these children and their parents, and while Blacks were still not permitted to be a part of these organizations, St. Mary’s stood out as the only (at least partially) integrated school in Anne Arundel County. One of my youth football coaches was Eggy Russell and his brother Daffy Russell. Both of them had proper legal names, but back then just about everyone around Annapolis had a nickname and the required formalities to recognize differences in age were more relaxed. Everyone who had known my father had called him Dubby. I was and still am called Buzzy by my schoolmates, and the Russell brothers will always be known as Eggy and Daffy. I talked to Eggy about the St. Mary’s coaching problem. Eggy told me to talk with Daffy and said, “I know football, but my brother Daffy knows lacrosse.” A few days later on a Saturday afternoon, I met with Daffy along with my best friend Willy Keyworth who shared my love of lacrosse and also was a disappointing failure in meeting academic expectations. We told Daffy of the impending threat to the St. Mary’s lacrosse program. He told us that his job would not permit him to leave work earlier than 4:30 in the afternoon. He must have recognized our disappointment because by the time that meeting ended we had worked out a compromise. Willy and I would “coach” the team for the first half of practice, after which Daffy would join us, and he would use some of his vacation time to coach us during the games. I met with Sister Grace Marie the following Monday. She complimented me on my academic improvement, warning me to keep up the same level of enthusiasm for my grades as I did for 70