DUKE LACROSSE CHASES NCAA TITLE TODAY
Category Sports | Thursday, July 15th, 2010BALTIMORE — Notre Dame coach Kevin Corrigan has some serious ties to Duke, leading him to joke that he had to cut off those ties with the Fighting Irish preparing to face the Blue Devils for the NCAA title today (3:30 p.m., ESPN).
“My father went to Duke, my uncle went to Duke, my brother works there,” Corrigan said. “I took them all off of speed dial this week, and I’m not talking to any of them.” unlocked cell phone
Corrigan’s father, Gene, and his uncle, James, played lacrosse for Duke in the mid-1940s. His brother Boo is a senior associate director of athletics at Duke, a similar title to the one he held at Notre Dame from 2004-08.
Corrigan’s famous father retired as ACC commissioner in 1997 after having also served at Notre Dame’s athletic director, but he was a lacrosse man at heart.
“My dad loved coaching. As he always says, if he didn’t have seven kids and they didn’t pay coaches anything in the sixties, he’d probably still be a coach,” Kevin Corrigan said. “He got out of coaching because he didn’t think he had any choice. In 1967, he was head lacrosse coach, head soccer coach and sports information director at the University of Virginia, and he made less money than I make in a two-day camp now.
“It was a different time in sports.”
While Kevin Corrigan owes his father credit when it comes to his chosen path, he also owes Duke’s current athletic director for some of the success his program is now enjoying.
On May 31, 2008 — two years ago today — Duke named Kevin White as athletic director. White had served as AD at Notre Dame the previous eight years. Gene Corrigan was a consultant for Duke’s AD search.
“I love Kevin White. He’s without question one of the best guys in the country at what he does,” said Corrigan, in his 22nd season at Notre Dame. “He was great for Notre Dame. What he meant to our program? We were a non-scholarship program without our own facility. Six years ago, I was not enjoying what I was doing the same way [as now], and I was not doing it as well as I thought I should have been.
“Kevin White had a huge influence on me finding my center. He’s great at what he does. He raised the level of every program at Notre Dame in terms of the commitment of the schools and the facilities, and personally he was great to deal with. I’m a huge Kevin White fan.”
Corrigan, who interviewed for Duke’s lacrosse vacancy in 2006, isn’t the only connection between the programs.