(La)Crossroads

DuPont Manual senior Victoria Bickett thinks that the school's girls' lacrosse program "is a family, not a team." As clichéd as that may sound, Bickett's remark holds some truth. A family -- albeit an extended one -- is what Manual coach Steve Auden has built over the last seven years. Auden's wife, Lisa, has coached alongside him. So has his stepdaughter, Alicia Meredith. They've earned the respect and affection of players past and present, who refer to Steve and Lisa Auden as parents. The Audens even attended a former player's wedding last year. "It's like having another mom and dad," says Kaitlin Shumate, who was a 2008 All-American at Manual and now plays for the University of Georgia's club team. "They know everything about us. If something's going on with us outside lacrosse, they'd be there." All families change over time, however, and Manual's lacrosse team is no exception. Auden, who led the team to three straight championships from 2004 to 2006, has decided that this season, his eighth as coach, will be his last. "It's going to be a huge loss for Manual," says junior Kasey Uhlenhuth. "It's just going to be so different." Auden, the chief of anesthesia at Kosair Children's Hospital, has been cramming lacrosse into his schedule all along. However he didn't consider it much of a problem when his wife or his stepdaughter was on the field with him. But Lisa Auden drastically reduced her coaching role in the last two years, which left the couple with much less time to spend together. Then, last summer, Meredith took her new master's degree from the University of Louisville and went to work in the athletics department at California State University at Bakersfield. Steve Auden was at a crossroads. "It's not that I wouldn't love to keep doing it," he says. "I've been around the sport for a long time, and this has been a special experience for me. But doing it by myself is not the same as doing it with them. I told Lisa, 'Alicia left me. But if you give me two days a week next year, then I'll do it one more time.' So that's what we're doing." Appropriately enough, family is what first brought Auden to Manual in 2002. He agreed to help the newly-formed Male-Manual joint club team - dubbed the Red-Dawgs - because Meredith wanted to play. That partnership lasted one season; Male and Manual went their separate ways in 2003. And only a year later, Auden guided Manual, which retained the Red-Dawgs name, to its first Kentucky Lacrosse Association championship. "I couldn't have asked for a better coach," says 2007 All-American Samantha Canary, who played on two of Manual's championship teams. "He loves the game and he knows so much about it." Canary joined Auden's coaching staff last year and now also is the president of the U of L women's club team. In what is still a young sport in Kentucky, few high school lacrosse players have continued their careers in varsity college programs. But Manual has produced four of them, including Meredith, who became the state's first Division I college lacrosse player at Ohio State in 2003. "He has inspired his players to go to the next level by playing either club or varsity lacrosse at the college level," says former KLA president Jann Logsdon, whose daughter, Jessica, played for Auden and now is a middle school coach at Collegiate. "He also has encouraged his players to become officials and coaches. The more coaches and officials we have in the area, the more we can grow the sport." And it has grown. The last two KLA champions, Collegiate and Kentucky Country Day, didn't exist when the Red-Dawgs debuted in 2002. There were only three other teams then: Ballard, Oldham and Sacred Heart. Today, there are 12. "We would not have 12 girls' high school teams but for Steve," Logsdon says. "He has done everything from conducting beginner clinics for new middle school and high school players, regardless of what school they planned to or were attending, to helping new coaches and officials learn the sport... Steve's positive influence is felt everywhere." That much, at least, might not change in the years ahead. "I'd like to stay involved," Auden says. "What I plan to do is offer myself to the KLA as a resource person. I'd go to a team and teach them lacrosse." After all, an even larger family - Kentucky lacrosse - still will need him.