Duke head coach John Danowski shakes hands with Notre Dame's Connor McCollough after Duke won the... [+] NCAA championship lacrosse game 11-9, Monday, May 26, 2014, in Baltimore.(AP Photo/Gail Burton)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
After graduating from Rutgers University in 1976, John Danowski decided to pursue a career in education and coaching. It was only fitting. He was following in the footsteps of his father, Ed, a former quarterback and halfback who led the New York Giants to the 1934 and 1938 NFL championships. When Ed’s playing career ended, he spent three decades teaching physical education in East Meadow, N.Y., and coaching in college, high school and junior high school.
Still, John’s mother, Josephine, wasn’t too happy about her son’s choice to coach. After all, Ed was Fordham University’s football coach in 1954 when the school decided to drop the sport. She had seen the pain that decision had inflicted on her husband. And she knew that coaching comes with long hours, plenty of criticism from fans and parents and usually little in terms of financial rewards.
“The one thing she didn’t want me to do was go into coaching,” John Danowski said, laughing. “My Mom was dead set against it, but my Dad was telling me to be happy and follow it.”
It’s a good thing Danowski listened to his father. More than 40 years later, he has become arguably the best coach in his sport’s history. But it’s not football. It’s lacrosse. Danowski, 65, is now Duke’s coach and has the most victories (412) in NCAA lacrosse history as well as three national titles.
On Saturday afternoon at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, Duke plays in the Final Four for the 11th time in Danowski’s 13 seasons at the school. The No. 2 seed Blue Devils face No. 3 seed Virginia, which they defeated, 12-7, last month. If Duke wins, it plays in Monday’s championship against No. 1 Penn State or No. 5 Yale, which beat Duke, 13-11, in last year’s title game.
“It never gets old,” Danowski said. “The excitement of watching a group of young men learn about themselves and about each other and figuring out what it takes to play in the last weekend is incredibly fascinating and rewarding and enriching. You can’t put a dollar amount on watching the growth and experiencing the highs and lows with them.”
Danowski is synonymous with lacrosse these days, but he wasn’t sure which sport he wanted to coach when he left Rutgers, where he had played on the lacrosse and football squads. He spent a few years coaching those sports as well as basketball at the high school level. He even was a graduate assistant for Columbia University’s football team. At the same time, he was a science teacher and guidance counselor.
In 1982, Danowski took a job making $1,000 as an assistant lacrosse coach at C.W. Post University under head coach Tony Seaman. When Seaman left to become Penn’s head coach the next year, Danowski was hired to replace him. Still, he only made $4,000 in that role, but he earned an additional $6,000 as a resident hall director. He and his wife also had a complimentary on-campus apartment and could eat for free at the campus dining hall.
“It was a pretty good gig,” Danowski said.
In 1986, Danowski became the head coach at Hofstra University, which was an established Division 1 program. It didn’t hurt that he got a raise, to $6,000, and was able to teach science during the day at a nearby middle school. He eventually became an academic advisor and assistant athletics director at Hofstra.
It wasn’t until the mid-1990's that Danowski could devote himself full-time to coaching lacrosse at Hofstra. By then, he had no plans to leave. His wife was working as an ultrasound technician, and their two children were enjoying growing up in Farmingdale, N.Y. on Long Island.
“We didn’t make a lot of money,” Danowski said. “But I loved what I was doing and she loved what she was doing. We lived the American dream – buy a house and raise our children in a wonderful school district.”
During his 21 years at Hofstra, Danowski coached in eight NCAA championships, including in 2006 when the Pride entered the event ranked second in the country after winning 16 consecutive games. Hofstra won its tournament opener against Providence but then blew a five-goal, fourth quarter lead in the quarterfinals and lost to the University of Massachusetts.
That ended up being Danowski’s final game at Hofstra. Following that season, he took the job at Duke, which was still reeling from a scandal in which three lacrosse players were charged with rape allegations that were later dropped. Duke’s president forced the program to cancel the 2006 season and forced coach Mike Pressler to resign, but the school reinstated the program the following year.
“It was a chance to do something way beyond the scope of lacrosse,” Danowski said. “There were a lot of kids here who were hurting, a lot of families that were hurting, because of what happened….How often in your life do you get a chance just to do good? That was my main motivation.”
Duke made the 2007 national title game in Danowski’s first season at the helm. Since then, the Blue Devils have emerged as the nation’s premier program, winning 77 percent of their games during Danowski’s tenure and almost always advancing deep in the NCAA tournament.
For the past seven seasons, Danowski has coached alongside his son, Matt, a former three-time All-American at Duke who is now an assistant at the school. Matt also plays professional lacrosse during the offseason and was a captain on the U.S. team that last summer won the world championship. John Danowski coached that team, and he also plans on coaching the U.S. in the next world championship in 2022.
Danowski still expects to be Duke's coach then, too. He may be old enough to apply for Social Security benefits, but he hasn’t given any thought to retiring.
“Until they tell me to scram, I’m all in,” he said.