Completed Event: Men's Lacrosse versus Georgetown on May 10, 2025 , Loss , 12, to, 16
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Men's Lacrosse
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Danowski: "Just Relax"
5/28/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Lacrosse
by Mike Corey
BALTIMORE - In the moments prior to the start of Duke's semifinal matchup with Cornell, ESPN's cameras caught head coach John Danowski in candid pose more suitable for Saturday Night Live than the NCAA Final Four.
The brim off his hat turned to the side, Danowski performed an impromptu rap routine, goofing around before what was perhaps the biggest game of his 20-plus year career. That's not exactly “Win one for the Gipper,” but it was effective all the same.
Indeed, throughout his brief tenure as Duke's coach, Danowski's unique personality and philosophy have helped to minimize the anxiety that too often belabors athletic teams in the more pressure-filled situations that inevitably arise throughout a season. Not a pre-game has passed with Danowski scribbling some form of the mantra, “Just relax,” somewhere in the locker room.
It is perhaps why the Blue Devils--after having withstood a furious rally from Cornell--were able to pull off a remarkable and efficient last-second play, despite having lost all momentum in the minutes preceding that game-winning goal. Calmness allows athletes to concentrate stress and channel it toward productivity.
But of Sunday, Danowski admitted toward seeking a productive source from up above.
“This morning I found a Catholic church in town and I went there specifically to pray for a victory,” he said. “I looked up and Bobby Benson, the assistant coach at [Johns] Hopkins was sitting about five pews ahead of me. So, I guess that kind of cancels everything out.”
His humor is part of that philosophy of relaxation, perhaps rooted in Danowski's sagacious belief that this game is essentially the second major for his players. Lacrosse is part of their educational experience at Duke, and should therefore be fun, an elixir to life's ails, not a cause of one.
It is fair to assert, then, that the mere act of returning to the field--and to the national championship game--has been cathartic for the Blue Devils, a form of expression that can compensate for the silence they wisely employed in the weeks and months when all they wanted to do was scream at the ugliness raining down upon them. But it's hard to be heard in a thunderstorm.
But Danowski has preferred to get his lessons across without raising his voice at all.
“We need discipline,” Danowski said in February. “Some think that means over the top yelling and screaming, but that's not what discipline is. It's doing things within a certain structure, and when they cross the line, you talk to them about those kinds of issues.”
Right now, the only issue is whether or not Duke can finish off what it started in 2005, when John Hopkins bested the Blue Devils in the national championship. This isn't about revenge, of course, but about reasserting Duke's place, about reclaiming the values of the university it represents, about resuscitating the image that was so unfairly tarnished in the interim.
“I said in the beginning and I know a lot of the other seniors agreed and probably everybody agreed that Coach Danowski was the perfect person for the job,” senior Tony McDevitt says.
And win or lose today, this Duke team was the perfect squad for him to coach.
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