Sanctity. His hands had never touched anything like what they touched that fall afternoon, what they clenched and haven’t let go of for 35 years.

Pure, unadulterated bliss. Thirty or so inches of beaten-up wood, a lacrosse stick with shoelace strings handed to him, John, the new kid on the block, by Kevin, a neighborhood staple. Take a try, kid. You’re in Syracuse now. You play lacrosse. Here’s a stick. Let’s go.

Ecstasy. Rapture. Love. And so began the obsession.

Lacrosse — she is good to John Desko. And John Desko — he is good to her, too. Their marriage is rife with mutual admiration. Desko is in his fourth year as head coach of the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team, which has booked 19 consecutive Final Four appearances. He brings the same vigor and vitriol he did as a young-buck assistant coach who would strike fear into his underlings with the tilt of his baseball cap, then charm them with a whip-crack one-liner. He learned those during his All-American tenure playing for the Orangemen. He played for the Orangemen because that kid, Kevin, handed him that junker of a stick and told him to go. And he did.

Actually, there’s more than that, much more. It all lies within the unspoken vows between John Terry Desko and lacrosse.

We are gathered here today to witness the coming together of two, whose hearts and spirits are entwined as one

What a huge head.

Mike Messere couldn’t stop staring. It was just … there. Exploding with blonde hair. Holding in place those sweet baby blues. Framing that crooked smile. Topping a 5-foot-10 frame that certainly didn’t look like it belonged to a seventh-grader.

Messere coached the West Genesee Middle School lacrosse team in 1970 and Desko, after excelling at football during the fall and basketball during the winter, needed his lacrosse fix. So he lugged his gear — and cranium — off to his first organized practice.

Yeah, he had played plenty in his back yard at 114 Ivy Lane, with Kevin and Billy and the other guys in the neighborhood. The Deskos moved to Syracuse when John, the patriarch, followed his phone-company job from the Binghamton area. They didn’t play much lacrosse down there.

Desko picked up the game quickly, as he did almost everything. He was a natural athlete: strong like Secretariat, fast like NASCAR and analytical like Patton. A scary troika. He saw plays before they happened, diagrammed them in the Telestrator that was his cerebrum. If someone sneaked by him, no problem. Desko ground those sequoias until he was running side-by-side with the poor guy, and he whapped him good. Then he picked up the ball, jetted by everyone and deposited it in the cage his dad made of old pipes.

Some afternoons he brought out Dave and Jeff, his younger brothers, and let them try to run with him. Others he played catch with dad, while his mom, Alene, stayed inside, offering Kevin and Billy something to eat, or drink, or whatever. She loved his friends.

Because they were the ones looking after her eldest child, her painfully shy, responsible-beyond-his-years son. They all went to that first practice together and faced Messere, a short, stout intimidator who took over the West Genesee High School program in 1976 and has since amassed a 544-32 record. He demanded success. They complied. Messere stuck Desko at midfield. Let the hyena run, he figured. What good is he stuck at either end of the field?

Success begat more success, and Kevin and Billy and John won three section championships at West Genesee High School. Colleges came calling.

A guy named Roy Simmons Jr. rang the house one day. The name was familiar, sure. He coached the Orangemen, who went 3-8 the previous season. He wanted Desko to come to Syracuse University, join his buddies Kevin Donahue and Billy Udovich. He wanted to build a championship team with local kids, like his father, Roy Simmons Sr., had done from 1931 until 1970. And like SU’s first coach, Laurie Cox, had done from 1916 until 1930.

Desko visited SU only a couple times in his life, despite living just seven miles away. He saw a basketball game or two at Manley Field House, took in a few football games at Archbold Stadium.

Staying home? That worked.

Playing with his boys? Even better.

Simmons wanted Desko, now 6-foot-3, 190 pounds, huge head. What he got, though, he never bargained for.

They now desire to profess before all the world their intention henceforth to walk the road of life together

They had their rolls. That’s it. A T-shirt, a jock strap and a pair of socks, rolled into a neat cylinder and handed to each Orangeman before each game. Wear ’em, toss ’em in the laundry and get ’em back.

No meal money. No transportation budget. No scholarships. No chance.

Simmons felt the pinch. Syracuse University went Enron in the early ’70s. Its financial troubles choked off the athletic budget and left Simmons with his T-shirts, jocks and socks to distribute the first day. Slugger, as he’s known, walked down Walnut Avenue looking for students throwing lacrosse balls, wondering if they’d be interested in wearing a Syracuse uniform. One catch: Gotta buy the rest of your equipment. Pads. Gloves. Jerseys. Shoes. Sticks. All on you, kids.

Same with the spring trip, during which Desko and four others piled into Udovich’s van and trekked to Princeton. Bliss came when it was your turn to lay on the mattress in the back of the van, or when you stopped for a quality meal at, say, McDonald’s. Simmons slipped you $2 or $3 out of his own pocket.

‘Enjoy,’ he’d say.

Desko was enjoying himself. He spent plenty of time first semester at the Delta Upsilon fraternity house and drank plenty of beer. Fun times spilled over into the mornings, when he’d get up, go to class, come home and start all over again.

Never, though, did he forget lacrosse. Because something happened in 1976. Simmons landed a tremendous class of freshmen, the kind of class that forever changes an athletic program. Donahue sparked the offense. Udovich secured a spot at midfield.

Desko? He played midfield, and he played it well, but there was an intangible he had, a quality that directed your eyes toward him. Tough to tell whether it was his speed, his stick-handling, his shot. He just had it.

SU won its first two games, at Kutztown and Princeton. After the latter victory, a 14-11 upset, the team celebrated like it won the national championship.

Desko sat still on his stool. They won a game. OK. Shouldn’t they have?

He pulled off his jersey and made a pact with himself. Winning would not spur celebration. Winning would become normal. And win they did, posting a 7-4 record, the Orangemen’s first above-.500 season since 1971. The next year produced nearly the same results: 8-6, no playoffs.

They needed a defense. Donahue and attackman Tom Abbott were All-Americans. The offense would be fine, Simmons guessed, so he approached his new assistant coach, Jay Gallagher, with a proposition.

‘You’re the defensive coordinator,’ Simmons said. ‘Don’t say a word to me for a week. Just watch the team and put together a defense. You can take anyone from any position. Just make me a defense.’

A week later, Gallagher tapped Simmons on the shoulder.

‘Roy,’ he said, ‘I’m going to break your heart. I’m going to take Desko.’

His speed suited the position. So did his stick skills. He craved takeaways like an alcoholic did just one more nip. Just one more sweet poke that left the ball on the ground and the offense dizzied, Desko begged.

SU went 10-3 that season, the first of two teams Desko captained. The Orangemen posted a 10-5 record in 1979, Desko made All-American and, most important, SU qualified for its first playoff run. Maryland bounced the Orangemen in the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals, 16-13.

Desko returned to campus unsure of things. Lacrosse ended. He stood a few credits shy of his sociology degree. Where to?

‘Come here, John,’ Simmons said one afternoon.

It was one of those days that changes your life. You wake up in the morning, rub the sleepers out of your eyes, shower, brush your teeth, head to class, say hi to a few people and then, out of nowhere, comes a call or a letter or, in this case, a messiah.

‘What’re you doing after graduation?’ Simmons asked.

‘Not sure,’ Desko said.

‘I’d like you to be my assistant.’

A job offer. He’d get to finish his degree for free, too, and he’d stay in the Syracuse area, coaching some of his best friends and staying with the game he loved.

John Desko, assistant lacrosse coach, Syracuse University. Yeah. That sounded just right.

To these two young people, this marriage signifies the birth of a new spirit, a spirit which is a part of each of us, yet not of any one of us alone

‘Aw, hell,’ whispered Jeff Desko, to no one in particular, as he saw his brother tilt his cap downward.

It was 1985, five years after John took the assistant job, two years after the Orangemen won their first national championship and one year after he married his wife, Cindy. Jeff was an All-American defenseman, teaming with Kevin Sheehan to form one of the nastiest one-two defensive punches in the nation.

Yet everyone quivered when the hat covered John’s eyes.

He was pissed. Mighty pissed. Maybe the weather stunk that day. Maybe the Carrier Dome was extra-hot. Maybe he had a piece of popcorn stuck in his teeth. Didn’t matter. It happened at random intervals, but every Orangeman knew when the hat came down, so did Desko’s wrath.

They’d be running. Lots.

Simmons was a softy, a gentle, kind-hearted man with a pleasant voice and passive demeanor. Desko was a teddy bear, too, until the soles of his shoes kissed the lacrosse field.

Tim O’Hara, one of Desko’s best friends and the all-time leading scorer at SU before the Powell brothers arrived, played his final season in 1980, Desko’s first as assistant. They were roommates, too. O’Hara had a bad day and certainly didn’t want to listen to Desko yap. O’Hara started to whine.

‘Start running,’ Desko said.

‘What?’

‘Start running, now.’

Thirty minutes later, O’Hara stopped trotting around the practice football field near Manley and approached Desko.

‘John,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’m your roommate.’

‘I’m the coach,’ Desko said.

And that was that.

He was the no-bull guy. Simmons needed one. They fed well off each other, bouncing ideas back and forth, conceptualizing plays, strategizing. A lacrosse alchemy.

Success begat more success. The Orangemen won back-to-back-to-back championships from 1988-90. Simmons crafted the inspirational lectures while Desko drew up the game plans. Simmons oversaw practice while Desko ran it.

It was inevitable. Desko had grown out of his temperamental stage and was being groomed as the heir to the Simmons’ throne. Simmons Jr. won national championships in 1993 and 1995, and in 1996 he started talking retirement. Before the 1998 season, he decided it would be his last.

He told Desko first. He wanted to inform his replacement.

This birth of spirit reminds us of spring, the season when all life is reborn and looms again. It is appropriate, therefore, that this wedding be in the spring, and that it be under the open sky, where we are close to the earth and to the unity of life, the totality of living things of which we are part

SU lost in the national semifinals that year, 11-10, to eventual national champion Princeton. Simmons announced his retirement that afternoon.

Officially, Syracuse would conduct a nationwide search and interview a wide array of candidates. Unofficially, dozens of administrators heeded the words of Simmons before his retirement: ‘John Desko will be our next coach. You’ll carry me out in a body bag first.’

Desko made too much sense. Nineteen years he had stood by Simmons’ side, or rather in Simmons’ shadow. Nineteen years, for little money and even littler recognition. Nineteen years, because he loved the game the first time he touched that carved piece of wood.

Plenty of head-coaching offers came in earlier seasons. Nah. Desko was a Syracuse guy, plain and simple. One day he would replace Slugger and continue the tradition that was born again in 1976. A legacy. He’d leave one.

Turmoil broiled during his first season. Sophomores John Glatzel and Tom Nee and freshman Mike Springer were booted off the team for breaking into Manley. Desko endured a rough regular season and, in the playoffs, avenged regular-season losses to Princeton, Loyola and Georgetown en route to a championship-game loss to Virginia.

In 2000, Glatzel, Nee and Springer returned. SU cruised to a 13-7 national championship-winning victory against Princeton. It’s easy to skim over the NCAA title as an afterthought, because, well, Roy Simmons Jr. won six of them. In many Simmons apologists’ eyes, Desko is, and always will be, Slugger’s clipboard carrier.

He made another final in 2001, losing to Princeton, 10-9, in overtime while becoming the only coach in NCAA history to make championship games his first three seasons. Desko won his 50th game as head coach last week and has the Orangemen (10-2) poised for another Final Four run, this one to make it 20.

And he’s happy. He comes home to Cindy and his four kids with sweat peeking from under his armpits, another tough practice gone by. He worries about recruiting and budgetary issues, but not as much as taking 6-year-old Casey to Brownies, or playing catch with 13-year-old Tim.

He sees his buddies playing the stock market, playing golf — playing in their leisure time.

Desko plays for a living. His assistant coaches are Kevin Donahue, his best friend since he was 10, and Roy Simmons III, his teammate for two years and another of his closest friends. He just bought a display case for the seven national championship rings he’s collected.

He loves Syracuse. He loves his life. He loves lacrosse.

‘You have a successful year,’ Desko says. ‘You enjoy that. You enjoy your family. You watch your kids grow. At the end of the year, you sit back with your wife, kick back, watch the kids go for a swim and enjoy the success of the team.

‘Guys come back or you get an e-mail or you go to a function and see a half a dozen guys show up who you’ve coached and see their families and how successful they are. All the time when you talk with these guys, they almost always say the biggest part of their education was what they learned through their lacrosse experience, on and off the field. I can’t do any better than that.’

Now, they all want him. The Kiwanis Club, the Lions Club — they want a winner, and John Desko is a winner.

They all want him to speak at dinners, to inspire the masses. He’s a coach. Coaches do that. Right?

It happens time and again: Desko sits down for his weekly lunch with Simmons Jr. and Simmons III, and Desko always bristles at — ugh — public speaking.

‘I don’t like to do things like that,’ Desko says. ‘Roy, why don’t you do it?’

Slugger just smiles, because he’s a smiler. Desko smiles, too. He knows what’s coming.

He knows because his vows are ironclad.

‘No, John,’ Simmons says. ‘You are Syracuse lacrosse.’

I now pronounce you husband and wife

Published on April 23, 2002 at 12:00 pm