For the past 40 years La Chureca, the city dump of Managua, has been home to about 1,500 people -- more than half children -- who survive by rummaging through mounds of garbage for any valuables worth selling: paper, scrap metal, medical supplies. They work where they live, choosing the rent-free life of a trash dump over the high cost of a shack in the more civilized, if you will, part of Managua. Think "Slumdog Millionaire."

It's a maddeningly difficult lifestyle, one that two men hope to gradually change through a means that has already provided them so much: lacrosse.

So how can a simple game of stick and ball so widely popular on Long Island help transform parts of the world most people would be content to ignore?

To begin, they formed Lacrosse the Nations, a nonprofit organization with the goal of using lacrosse to bring hope and foster relationships with some of the most deprived communities in the world. They view it not as a Band-Aid approach of raising money, maybe build a building and moving on to the next area. It's about building relationships from the ground up.

"What does it look like when our community uses lacrosse to intertwine itself in a community and really try to effectively change some of the things, the fundamental needs that we see," said Brett Hughes, a co-founder of Lacrosse the Nations, in a telephone interview.

Lacrosse has been an integral part of Hughes' life from an early age. An outstanding defenseman from Ohio, he attended the University of Virginia where he helped the Cavaliers to an NCAA title in his junior year in 2003. He started every game over his four-year career before injuries forced him to take a year off after graduating in 2004. The next year he was the first pick of the Major League Lacrosse supplemental draft and began a career with New Jersey. He is now a member of the Denver Outlaws, and his team will face Boston Saturday in the semifinals of championship weekend. When not on the field, Hughes works for ESPN RISE, writing about high school lacrosse, while also running Nike Elite camps. A few weeks ago he was on Long Island for a camp at the Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale.

Through all the success, he always yearned to be part of something bigger. Something with a higher purpose.

He found it with the help of his friend Brad Corrigan, who played lacrosse for Middlebury College, where he graduated in 1996. It was Corrigan's musical talent that first brought him to Nicaragua for a youth rally concert in 2005. Corrigan grew to fame as a musician with the band Dispatch, where he played under the name Braddigan. While the band's three members parted in 2002, they've reunited several times since then, most recently in 2007 to take part in a fundraiser for people in Zimbabwe. The band sold out three straight shows at Madison Square Garden, the only independent band to sell out the famed arena in its history. Corrigan now plays in his own band, called Braddigan.

On that first trip to Nicaragua the toxic environment of the dump overwhelmed Corrigan. The sight of barefoot children walking among mounds of filth day after day carried a wave of emotions.

"My heart was such a weird mix of anger, confusion and sadness as I walked around and took it all in," Corrigan wrote on the Lacrosse the Nations Web site.

Ever since his first trip, Corrigan made a point to return. Inspired by a young girl named Ileana, whom he later wrote a song after, he helped form Love, Light and Melody in 2007. A nonprofit organization, its goal is "battling the physical, emotional and spiritual effects of extreme poverty in trash dump communities."

Corrigan had spoken with Hughes about Love, Light and Melody and visiting La Chureca. It sparked an idea, crazy as it may have sounded. What if they packed a few lacrosse sticks, brought a net and let the children of La Chureca experience a game never seen before? What would happen?

The idea became reality in January.

Hughes and Corrigan traveled with a small crew that included a few recent high school graduates, college players and some Major League Lacrosse players. A photographer and two people on a film crew joined to document the trip.

"It's amazing what you can learn from a community that looks like they have nothing, but has far more than a lot of us can comprehend because they have the ability to smile in the face of adversity," Hughes said.

They didn't know what to expect from the kids when they introduced lacrosse. Baseball is the most popular sport in the country, followed by soccer. They'll even play their own game that combines handball with baseball.

But lacrosse was something entirely new. Before they brought out any lacrosse sticks they tried a game of handball first to break the ice. Soon after, the players began demonstrations with the lacrosse sticks. It wasn't anything like a regular camp in the United States. It wasn't about fancy stick skills, but merely showing them the game.

"They're just athletes," Hughes said of the kids. "They're working in the trash dump, they have the hand-eye coordination. They're very athletic kids."

The group featured a variety of boys and girls from 8-year-olds to teenagers, and even some parents.

"You can't really set up a lacrosse league in La Chureca but we can play every time we come down," Hughes said. "We can leave sticks with the school and have these people have an outlet where it's not doing drugs or working in the trash dump, being exposed to child prostitution and drug trafficking."

The lessons sports teach of teamwork and camaraderie are what the Lacrosse the Nations members hope stay with the children of La Chureca after they leave. The kind of lessons the children can carry over into school and use together when their parents are away working 12 to 16 hours in a day to earn a few dollars.

At first parents were skeptical of the lacrosse camp. The first few days only a few came out. But soon the idea of mañana -- tomorrow -- surfaced.

In these parts of the world all anyone talks about is what today looks like.

"How do you look toward tomorrow when you're hoping to feed yourself for today?" Hughes said.

Lacrosse provided hope. A reason to look ahead. A reason to smile, to not think about the horrific conditions surrounding them.

Emily Brice, the wife of Major League Lacrosse player Greg Brice, summed it up perfectly in a video on the Web site: "Once you're playing and having fun and you're out there enjoying your time, you kind of forget where you are. And you realize, 'I'm in the middle of a trash dump.' "

Since their first trip to Nicaragua, Hughes and the crew have returned for the Day of Light Festival sponsored by Love, Light and Melody.

"I went with Greg Brice and we brought lacrosse to that week of light," Hughes said. "They saw it again and we've had one other time where Brad brought some sticks out when we weren't there."

In September another weeklong trip is planned. It takes time, Hughes said, because you have to earn the right to be heard. For Corrigan, he had to learn what not to do first before he really earned the right to be heard, Hughes said.

"When he rolls through, especially now when I roll through, we're welcomed as family," Hughes said.

Hughes is known as pelo loco, crazy hair, for his long hair down to his shoulders. When he arrives, kids run toward him for hugs. They yell, asking for the field or the sticks.

The best part, Hughes said, is that if they showed up without any sticks, the kids would be just as happy.

"It's a pretty simple concept," he said. "It's mentoring at the most basic level."

Lacrosse the Nations is very much in its infancy. Looking ahead, the goal would be to expand to other cities, whether in Costa Rica, Brazil or Honduras. Each city would need its own core of devoted volunteers who could commit to that place as a home away from home.

Hughes knows each community would need its own Brad Corrigan.

"It's a serious process to effect change," he said.

What makes the organization likely to succeed is the strength of the lacrosse community it's built upon.

"It's such a tight-knit community and most of them are willing to help," Hughes said.

At Mountain Lakes in New Jersey, a school that has played the Shoreham-Wading River boys on several occasions, two players made bracelets that they sold along with concessions for money to donate to Lacrosse the Nations.

"It's the lacrosse community at its finest," Hughes said. "What can your local high school do? Do you want to stand for something a little bigger?"

For someone who's reached the pinnacle of the sport, it's his work with Lacrosse the Nations that has left the everlasting impact.

Sure, lacrosse is fun. The Final Four is great. But this, he says, is about changing hearts.

Daniel Bain, who is the site director for Love, Light and Melody, joined the Lacrosse the Nations team as well. On the video posted on the Web site he talks with one young girl about La Chureca and lacrosse.

When he asks a question about lacrosse, she responds in Spanish, "The game with sticks? It is beautiful."

joew@northshoresun.com

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Lacrosse the Nations : 9/17/2009
If any of you read the story about Lacrosse the Nations and were inspired or intrigued, hop on their website and "give them five"...five dollars that is. How cool would it be if a thousand people did that! That would get more lacrosse equipment where it needs to go and allow more relationships to be built. I already made my donation! Make yours now! Make a difference!

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