Chesapeake Showdown:

July 26 * * * 7:00 PM at Lake Shore (Pasadena)

Lake Shore Complex (directions – http://www.cyla.org/12301.html)

For the season finale, we will pick up our stix, travel and play a game with the CYLA summer team.

See you up there!

It's Samaras' face, thanks to computerized tinkering, and she laughed as she explained:
"I’ll never be Peter Pan. Unless someone finds an island with men 8 feet tall, it's not going to happen. We need to assess and find our limitations and expectations."

Anne Arundel County, though, has a number of amateur sports people who say that in the context of lacrosse, Cathy Samaras could easily be thought of as a Peter Pan. Directly and indirectly, she has encouraged thousands of children as, through the sport, they discover new, fun-derful worlds.

Not boys and pirates and that fantasy stuff of filmdom's Peter Pan. But girls, mainly, picking up lacrosse sticks, throwing, catching and cradling that hard rubber ball; developing muscles and stamina; running, passing, shooting, winning, losing, being part of a team, and learning sports lessons as well as lessons for life.

"I call her the Godmother of Lacrosse in this county," said Nancy Schrum, who can't forget the donation she received nearly a decade ago from Samaras' Annapolis-area program to help establish a youth lacrosse program for girls in the Lake Shore area. "The lady's got vision."

Beebe Castro, a retired Anne Arundel County Department of Recreation and Parks supervisor who established recreation-level sports programs for girls and women in the county during a 20-year career that ended in 1989, said she never worked with Samaras but quickly volunteered: "You know, for years and years, her name has been synonymous with lacrosse in this county."

The rec department last week honored Samaras with an award named for Castro. Given annually since 1990, the award recognizes someone for involving girls in sports, but somehow, Samaras had never been chosen.

"She should have been honored years ago," said Shrum, herself a former Castro award winner. "It's been a long time coming for Cathy, but she's a behind-the-scenes leader, an organizer and not as visible to some. But she really deserves it."

Added Georgette Shalhoup, a rec department sports supervisor: "She looks for opportunities for all to play. The thing is, she's teaching people."

Samaras, a 1965 Towson University alumna and former physical education teacher, got started in lacrosse because a daughter, then 9, wanted to play and the only league sorely needed coaches. Samaras - wife of a physician and mother of two sons and four daughters, all athletes - volunteered.

Early on, she helped rescue two then-struggling youth boys leagues in the Annapolis area. Within a couple years, she focused on the women's version of lacrosse - it's more free-flowing, less contact-prone than the men's game - and never looked back.

Her first girls league, for middle-schoolers, played summers. She formed a spring girls league that she named Quickstix (after an eye-blink-fast shooting technique in the sport), and now operates, with three grown daughters, all former college All-Americans, a budding business that involves the women's game internationally.

She was a director for three years of the Lacrosse Foundation, which became U.S. Lacrosse, the sport's governing federation in this country. She has been president of both the U.S. Women's Lacrosse Association and then U.S. Lacrosse's women's division. And she did four years as vice president of marketing and promotion for the International Federation of Women's Lacrosse Associations.

"You know why I got out of all that?" Samaras said. "Because I could not deal with people incapable of making decisions. Committees, in my opinion, don't make decisions; they eat up a lot of time."

The energetic Samaras also is, you see, a character, or as she puts it, "I have a big mouth."

She throws off ideas - "going out on a whim," she calls it - intended to spread the gospel of women's lacrosse. She's behind several tournaments that college coaches flock to, hoping to recruit players, including one that will have 220 teams competing in June for national championships in three age- and skill-related divisions. She publishes a detailed yearbook listing every player in high school and college lacrosse for females. She has helped establish an elite-level league for youth players.

Quickstix, now a year-round program, is one of the nation's primary developers of talent in girls and women's lacrosse - no overstatement.

Just over 40 percent of the players on the final four teams in last spring's NCAA Division I women's lacrosse tournament were involved at some point in Quickstix. And of 20 college athletes considered for Tewaaraton Player of the Year honors, eight had participated in Quickstix leagues. Don't believe it? Neither did Samaras until she verified it in the computerized database that is part of the womenslacrosse.com business she and daughters Cory, 28, Crista, 27, and Stephy, 26, are operating.

That business has grown so fast, Samaras said, that she now has a small paid staff, and she receives more than 100 e-mails daily related solely to lacrosse.

"Pretty astonishing," she said. "It's just happened, one thing leading to another. It's not anything I actively pursued."

A “triangular” competition was held on Sunday with the Alpha and Beta Quickstix teams. Each team played an entire game over the course of 90 minutes.

The day began with the opening draw between Tiffany Foster (Quickstix) and Sophie McGregor (Godstowe ) flanked by #13 Emily Davis (Godstowe) and Emily Aras (Quickstix) and finished with the rousing cheer as shown.