Nida: Ned & Virginia Crotty Continue Family Tradition At Duke

DURHAM, N.C. ? When Ned Crotty decided in the summer of 2004 to play his college lacrosse at Duke, he became the fourth of the Crotty children to choose to attend the university. And when his younger sister, Virginia Crotty, followed suit two years later, she became the fifth.

Only Alexandra, the eldest Crotty child, decided to go elsewhere (she matriculated to Georgetown). So it was Sarah ? who would go on to graduate from Duke in 2002 ? who began the Duke tradition in the Crotty family.

But that tradition almost ended before it even began.

“The one memory I have of bringing (Sarah) down here was that it was pouring rain and she was hysterically crying,” Virginia recalled.

Ned confirmed Virginia's memory.

“When (Sarah) first came here, it was raining, cold, and she hated it,” Ned said. “My dad had to force her to come back.”

At the behest of her father, Sarah did come back, and when she did, the sun was shining. After visiting some classes and talking to a few people, her view of Duke did a 180, and a tradition was born.

Three years later, Joe Crotty (class of 2005) joined his sister, and a year later, Martha Crotty (class of 2006) followed suit. Then it was only the two youngest Crotty children, Ned and Virginia, who had yet to make a college choice.

But because of their athletic prowess, Ned and Virginia's college selection process was to be much different than that of any of their siblings. Joe was a standout hockey player, but a knee injury curtailed his athletic career, so even though Ned and Virginia had watched their siblings choose a college, they were in many ways entering uncharted waters.

And, at least at first, the family connection wasn't exactly helping Duke's cause.

“I know we both kind of wanted to do our own thing,” Ned said. “In that way, the fact that so many people had come here kind of made us want to go somewhere else.”

In Ned's case, that meant considering many of the top lacrosse programs around the country. Ned was recruited by Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Princeton after a high school career where he twice earned All-America honors as he helped the Delbarton School to three consecutive New Jersey state championships.

“Ned was a sick athlete in high school,” Virginia said. “He was player of the year in hockey and lacrosse. He was probably a better hockey player than a lacrosse player. He's absurd. He's a freak.”

With that in mind, it's not surprising that Ned's primary suitors were all traditional lacrosse powers. And, as you might expect from such programs, they did their homework on Ned and his siblings.

“When I first talked to all those schools, basically the first question was, ?Are you going to Duke?' and ?What are our chances?' ” Ned said. “They all knew about my family. Right away I said, ?I'd really like to do something different. I'm not definitely going to Duke.' ”

Ned delivered the same message to then Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler, and Pressler consistently told Ned to take all the time he felt he needed. Ned checked out other programs, visited other schools, but he never felt more comfortable than he did around the team at Duke.

When Ned finally committed to the Blue Devils in the summer of 2004, he proved Pressler prescient.

“I remember (Pressler) said when we were going through the process, one of the reasons why he felt so comfortable giving me as much time as I needed was because he knew I was coming here,” Ned said. “I thought that was kind of cocky, but kind of cool.

“It wasn't the fact of the family or anything like that. I guess in his mind I was a sure fit for Duke. He saw that right away. I remember him saying, ?Go take the time you need. Go do the looks. And in the end, you're going to come here.' Sure enough, he was right.”

But Ned was only able to play under Pressler for a short time. Ned's freshman season was the controversy-tainted spring of 2006, so less than 10 games into his career, his first year was canceled and the coaches that had recruited him were gone.

Fortunately, John Danowski stepped in to take over the reins, and the program hasn't missed a beat.

“Last year could have been a complete disaster if we had had an awful coach, a coach with a completely different mindset,” Ned said. “It could have been a lot of different things, so thank God it was Coach Danowski.”

While Ned dealt with the turmoil of his freshman season, his younger sister was at home in New Jersey trying to make some decisions of her own.

Much like her brother, Virginia was being pursued by a number of top lacrosse programs, Georgetown and Vanderbilt among them. And much like her brother, Virginia was intent on blazing her own trail and not following in her siblings' footsteps.

“I thought I would go somewhere other than Duke,” Virginia said. “Our oldest three siblings fell in love with it, but I know Ned was really highly considering other schools, and I was the same. I didn't want to come here. I thought I would go somewhere different.”

How different? Try the University of North Carolina.

That's right. After watching four of her siblings fall in love with Duke, Virginia's college choice ended up a recruiting battle between the Blue Devils and their archrivals.

“I was torn for a while,” Virginia said. “Really torn.”

In the end, though, Virginia arrived at the same conclusion as Ned, Martha, Joe and Sarah, which was that Duke was the place for her. A couple factors played an important role in the decision, not the least of which was the relationship Virginia developed with women's lacrosse head coach Kerstin Kimel.

“There was something about Kerstin that was different from every other school,” Virginia said. “She's very honest and very open. Kerstin flat-out told you what she thought, what the progress I needed to make was, what I needed to do. We had a healthy recruiting relationship, and it worked out great.”

Kimel could probably give an assist to Ned, though. As the last two children remaining in the Crotty household after everybody else had gone off to college, the two recruited athletes in the family -- only two years apart in age -- Ned and Virginia developed a particularly tight relationship.

“We hang out a lot,” Ned said. “We were always real close just because we were the two youngest. Especially after we were the last two home and everybody was off at college or graduated, we got really close.”

Presumably, by that point, Ned had stopped treating Virginia like the little brother he never had.

“Ned and I were the bottom two,” Virginia said. “I was a tomboy, and I think he wishes I was a boy. He still did beat me up.”

But Ned expressed nothing but support when it came time for Virginia to choose a school, so it was good for both of them when Virginia decided that Duke was where she wanted to be.

“We wanted go to school together,” she said. “Everyone else had a sibling with them at one point or another, so that was definitely appealing for me. And my parents wanted me to come here so he could watch out for me, but I think that's kind of pathetic.”

This spring, the Crotty family will watch as Virginia embarks upon her college lacrosse career and Ned plays an integral role for a Blue Devil team with legitimate national championship hopes. This summer, they will celebrate the marriage of Sarah to Mike Dunleavy Jr., the former Duke basketball star.

The connection between the Crotty family and Duke just keeps getting stronger.