Following exhibition contests against Bellarmine and Detroit, the Irish will take part in community service activities.

Irish Head To Chicago For Playing For Peace Catholic Lacrosse Showcase

Oct. 3, 2012

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NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The University of Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team’s flurry of fall activity will continue this weekend in Chicago. The Fighting Irish will take part in the Playing for Peace Catholic Lacrosse Showcase on Saturday. On tap for the team will be two scrimmages, a youth clinic and community service.

Notre Dame will face Bellarmine (10 a.m. CT) and Detroit (11:30 a.m.) in exhibition games at Hales Franciscan High School, which is located at 4930 South Cottage Grove Ave. in Chicago. Detroit squares off against Bellarmine at 8:30 a.m. All three contests are free and open to the public. Fans that are in town for that night’s Notre Dame-Miami football game (6:30 p.m. CT) are encouraged to come support the Fighting Irish lacrosse team.

There also will be a free lacrosse clinic beginning at 1:30 p.m. (CT) at Hales Franciscan High School for boys in the 8th grade and below.

All three teams will take part in community service work throughout the day at Hales Franciscan High School. The work includes painting classrooms, landscaping and cleaning up the school’s trophy case area.

The Fighting Irish squad also will go to St. Malachy School in Chicago for more service work, which will include painting, landscaping and building a shed that will store the school’s youth lacrosse equipment.

“We are going to bring people together to watch Division I men’s lacrosse, which there isn’t any in Chicago, and do community service work,” Notre Dame head coach Kevin Corrigan said. “Even the officials want to do the service work with us after the games and that’s a neat thing. That’s exactly the kind of response we love to get. We’ll have the three teams and the officials all working together to benefit the community.”

The Playing for Peace initiative seeks to use the platform of sport to transcend boundaries and bring people together in the pursuit of peace, justice and human understanding. Notre Dame has been heavily involved in the Playing for Peace crusade to bring lasting peace to Sudan and now the men’s lacrosse program is looking to bring the initiative to a local level.

“We became involved in the Playing for Peace initiative around the Sudanese referendum, but really it was part of an effort for us to become engaged in the campus community and engaged in the larger South Bend and national communities and even internationally,” Corrigan said. “We also wanted to involve the lacrosse community and have a platform that made sense for us on a lot of levels.

“We want to show that peace is more than just the absence of war. We also want to show the role that Catholic education plays in communities and in promoting peace in communities. There are statistics that speak to the role Catholic schools play in lessening violence and raising the level of dignity for people in the community.”

The Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team is actively involved in service projects in the South Bend area. On Tuesday morning, the Irish squad spent time mentoring students at Dickinson Middle School. The team also competed in the Our Town Truck Pull on Saturday to raise money for elementary schools in the local community.

“The mentoring at Dickinson Middle School is something that’s been ongoing for us,” Corrigan said. “We’ve been mentoring in South Bend middle schools for no less than eight years now. That’s something we’ve done and that we’ll continue to do. We’ll also do some other events like the truck pull that fit in with what we’re trying to accomplish with our service. We want to make sure we’re doing service that is meaningful, productive and valuable to the communities that we are serving. We also want to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that our team learns what the rights and responsibilities of being in a community are. We want them to learn that you have an obligation to give back and share your good fortune with those who are less fortunate.”

The Fighting Irish held an open practice/scrimmage on Sunday in Crown Point, Ind. The event continued the mission of the Fighting Irish program to enhance the growth of the sport in the state of Indiana.

Notre Dame will square off against Navy on Oct. 13 in its final fall ball affair. The contest is scheduled for 11 a.m. (ET) at Arlotta Stadium. It is another opportunity for Irish fans in the community and those in town for that day’s football game versus Stanford (3:30 p.m.) to see the nationally-ranked Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team.

Notre Dame posted a 13-3 record in 2012 and advanced to the semifinals of the NCAA Championship. The Fighting Irish won the BIG EAST regular-season title with a perfect 6-0 league mark.

Follow the Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team on social media and the internet …

Twitter: @NDlacrosse
Facebook: ndlacrosse
YouTube: www.youtube.com/ndlaxtv
Athletics Web Site: UND.com
Playing for Peace Twitter: @playing4peace

— ND —