Danowski ready to lead Duke past rape scandal

The old pictures and shelves are gone, leaving only a fresh coat of paint. Coach John Danowski figured his office was a good place to start the makeover of the Duke men's lacrosse program.\nFive months have passed since a team party started a chain of events that resulted in rape charges against three players, the cancellation of the team's season and the resignation of its longtime coach. Now it's up to Danowski -- the former Hofstra coach and the father of a current Blue Devils star -- to lead the effort to repair everything from Duke's tarnished reputation to his players' wounded psyches.\n"We're going to get new furniture, and it's 'Let's get going,'" he said. "It's a new message. Not saying it's a better one, just a new one. A new coach and a new way of doing things."\nAt the start of last season, coach Mike Pressler was entering his 16th year in Durham, N.C., and his squad was coming off an appearance in the NCAA championship game that seemed to signal Duke's arrival as a perennial title contender.\nBut Pressler resigned last spring, shortly after a woman told police she was raped by three men at a March team party where she was hired to perform as a stripper. All but one of the lacrosse team's players gave DNA samples to investigators and were considered suspects for weeks, until a grand jury indicted three -- Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J.; Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y.; and David Evans, 23, of Bethesda, Md. -- on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense.\nLawyers for the three indicted players have proclaimed their innocence; a trial isn't expected to begin until spring 2007.\nThe rape allegations led Duke to first suspend the team from play, then later cancel the remainder of the season. The university also weathered widespread criticism of the program and the players' behavior, which included some alcohol-related criminal charges.\nAfter an internal investigation, the school reinstated the program in June; the following month, Duke hired the 52-year-old Danowski -- father of All-American attackman Matt Danowski -- to lead the Blue Devils back to the field.\n"He has lived through this," Athletics Director Joe Alleva said. "He has lived through it as the parent of a kid on the team. He knows what these kids have been through. He knows what the parents have been through. And he can facilitate the healing process of all that."\nFor now, that means preparing for fall training camp -- which begins Labor Day -- and getting acclimated to a new campus and new players. But Danowski figures moving past the traumatic events of the spring will be a year-long process.\n"Maybe these guys are going to want to prove to the world every time out that everybody was wrong about them," Danowski said. "That's going to be tough if you're carrying that kind of emotion on every pass or every shot or every save you make or every ground ball you go after. That's something I have to be mindful of as we go through the year."\nHis plan is to emphasize having fun and keep a close watch on his players' stress levels. He talks eagerly about his plans to remake his office by adding couches and making it an inviting place for his players to stop by and talk.\nIt's no surprise that a man who describes parenthood as "one of my most cherished roles in life" exudes a father-figure coaching style. When his son made his college choice, Danowski chose the role of father over that of coach, sitting quietly at the dining-room table while his Hofstra assistants made the official pitch for their program.\nBetween his family connection and his success at Hofstra -- where Danowski compiled a record of 192-123 in 21 years -- it's easy to see why Alleva called Danowski "an unusually good fit" to take over at Duke.\n"Coach Danowski has been around this program through all this turmoil," said Tony McDevitt, a rising senior defenseman. "He has a good sense of how to deal with this situation because he's been there from step one to wherever we've got to go. \n"In our eyes, there's nobody that can really replace Coach Pressler right now, especially for the seniors and juniors who have been around him for a long time. But if it's got to be somebody, Coach Danowski is the best fit."\nDanowski, one of eight Division I lacrosse coaches with at least 200 career wins, sounds unconcerned about the pressure of running a program that's sure to have every step -- or misstep -- carefully reviewed. He said he expects the players will be on their best behaviors.\nHe's also made an effort to call and introduce himself to the three team members with the most uncertain futures of all -- Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans. Evans graduated the day before he was charged in May, while Seligmann and Finnerty who would have been juniors on next year's team -- are on a leave of absence from the university.\nTo Danowski, the roles of father, teacher and disciplinarian are all facets of coaching.\n"The bottom line is I'm not afraid to fail at this," he said. "Just as we ask our kids to step out on a playing field and compete and do their best and take risks ... that's the same thing as a coach. And that's part of the fun"