UNM's lacrosse team is an operation running mostly on heart.
It doesn't have a coach, members bought all their own equipment and luckily one guy just happened to have the lacrosse goal, but somehow, even without advertising, the team has managed to recruit about 18 players.
It started when freshman Andy Mentor, his roommate and their Resident Adviser Maxx Gallegos broke out the lacrosse sticks and started playing on Johnson Field last semester.
"Maxx just said 'let's start this up, I bet we could get people out here,' and a semester later we've got more people than we could have imagined," said Mentor, who is now the vice president of UNM's lacrosse club.
Gallegos became president, spent his own money on jerseys for the team and is one of the few members who actually knew how to play beforehand. Gallegos said about half the guys had experience with lacrosse, and the rest are still learning how to handle the sticks.
Lacrosse is similar to hockey in some ways, but, Gallegos said, there are two major differences. First, he said, you can't fight or physically hold another player in lacrosse. Second, you can't just club a guy with your stick in hockey the way you can in lacrosse, he said.
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"It's pretty rough," he said. "There's a lot of contact. You can hit a guy as hard as you want with your stick as long as it's below the throat or above the knees."
Gallegos said the main goals for the year include joining the Mountain West Conference and getting games with nearby teams, which has been pretty hard because seasons are usually planned a year in advance. The UNM team's first official game this season will be March 7 in Santa Fe.
There aren't any other teams in Albuquerque, and lacrosse isn't as well known as other sports, but lacrosse is the only sport that originated on this continent, Gallegos said.
"It's the only true American sport because the Native Americans, the Iroquois, invented it," he said. "Every other sport I can think of is just an offshoot of something else."
James Simermeyer, who played Division I lacrosse for Dartmouth University as an undergraduate, is acting as the unofficial coach for the team.
"He doesn't want to be called coach per se, but we listen to him," Mentor said.
Simermeyer said though the team is young, it's got fire and dedication to spare.
"A lot of the guys never played before, and they're coming out here five days a week," he said. "That's pretty good considering they never picked up a stick before."
Players come from a variety of backgrounds, he said, including soccer, rugby, hockey and football. Working with athletes new to the sport means teaching basic skills, he said.
"That kind of stuff is easy, though," Simermeyer said. "The hard thing to get in a team is the excitement and the commitment, and that stuff is already there, so from here it's a can of corn."
