EVESHAM - On a typical spring Friday afternoon, the vast campus at Cherokee High School is bustling with activity. Tucked away on the field farthest from the school is the boys lacrosse team, intensely preparing for its next game. Ed McLaughlin watches with fatherly approval. Although he won't ever take much credit, he helped build lacrosse in South Jersey. His tone is modest and when referring to a lacrosse colleague's words of praise, he simply states that the words are too kind, but his fingerprints are all over the team and others throughout the area. They are marks that won't ever fade because he has helped mold these young men through an intense love of the sport.

McLaughlin, 54, is one of the founders of the South Jersey lacrosse club Black Storm, which began as a summer league in 1990. The club has since grown to include not only high school kids, but seventh- and eighth-graders, elementary school hopefuls and novice players. It was the only place to play lacrosse in South Jersey at the time since it would be years before the sport was added to high school curriculums.

John Tsigounis is a senior coach for the Black Storm and has a son, Chris, on the Cherokee team. He called McLaughlin the father of South Jersey lacrosse for his efforts to establish the sport in the area. The humble coach sees it otherwise.

Not father or founder, but maybe more of a steward, McLaughlin said. The game's been around a lot longer than me. Over the years, kids from 20 different high schools have played for the club team and today, some 30 who compete for the club are also playing at the high school level.

For years, (the club program) is all there was for those who wanted to play lacrosse, Cherokee coach T.J. Viereck said. We've been fortunate enough to have a lot of kids come in with experience from the South Jersey lacrosse program. Now, you look at lacrosse in South Jersey and high schools are adding it left and right and there are youth programs and it's really starting to develop.

Perhaps the only thing McLaughlin is more passionate about other than lacrosse itself is the development of the players. He likes to say that there is a place for everyone who wants to play no matter the athlete's ability.

He just has so much knowledge from being around it so long, McLaughlin's son, Drew, a junior lacrosse player at Cherokee, said. If you're an athlete, he can make you into a lacrosse player no matter what sport you play.

McLaughlin's ability to give every player a place and a chance, connect to those players and squeeze out every last drop of effort they have is an homage to those who gave him a chance.

I had a (college) football coach that was also the head lacrosse coach, McLaughlin said. He told me he coached this other sport in the spring and he asked me to try it. This was on a team that was a rising Division 1 power and all of a sudden, I'm part of this mix. They were much more skilled than me, but they made you part of something.

McLaughlin played his college lacrosse at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. The decent, honorable men” who McLa-ughlin described from his collegiate career served as his mentors, a role that he has now taken on for countless lacrosse players since the club team began 16 summers ago.

And it's not just McLaughlin that has helped create a program that has become a factory of fine student-athletes. McLaughlin has a list of names that have turned in tireless hours of their mentoring efforts.

The list begins with Charles Crabbe Thomas, who McLaughlin calls the true godfather of all men's lacrosse in South Jersey. It includes Sharon Madden, Erol Bond, Chuck Holland, Tony Laveglia, Nancy Haley, Chris Prifte, Tsigonis, Skip Rand, Val Curran and Mike Weiss.

They are what McLaughlin calls the story of lacrosse in South Jersey, coaches and parents “who have enriched my life in lacrosse and the lives of so many young men.

Coaches can impact high school aged kids, he said. I learned a long time ago that with a glance, or a non-glance, a look, or a voice inflection, you can endorse them, cause them to be comfortable, or crush them. You see them go from little boys to young men and you say maybe I had an impact on them and maybe I steered them one way or the other.

McLaughlin gave each of his players a copy of author David Halberstam's book, The Education of a Coach, about New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. In the book, Halberstam describes Steve Sorota, a football coach who mentored a young Belichick, as a quiet kind of legend, one who understands what it's like to be a young man, doesn't lose his temper and above all else, is a teacher of young athletes.

It's a story that McLaughlin likes to share, but it's also one that describes him and mirrors his own style and relationship with his athletes.It's about having a role in their lives and having relationships and seeing outcomes, he said. I always tell them, "guys, we're with you forever, not just to learn the X's and O's. They're just kids and I stand by them. Sometimes they break your heart and sometimes they lift you up so high that you just think you'll never come down.