Seawolves Fans

Adam Rand doesn't tend to understate what Shoreline Lacrosse, a club program he founded in 2009, means to him or what his long-term goal is.

"We're going to keep this program around forever," Rand said. "I've had people say, 'We'd love to buy your program.' Not over my dead body. The program means the world to me. I believe I've got the best coaching staff. We've grown every single year. We're here for the long term.

Rand's love of lacrosse began in East Lyme and continued during his career at Division I Stony Brook University, where he became one of the nation's top face-off specialists of all-time. He graduated with 796 face-offs won, third most in NCAA Division I history, and was second all-time in face-offs attempted. He earned United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association honorable mention All-America honors as a senior.

"I played lacrosse here, I was lucky enough to play in college and when I came back I thought, 'How can we take an area of Connecticut that's not known for lacrosse and ultimately get southeastern Connecticut to become a hotbed?'" Rand recounted in a telephone interview this week.

Rand began Shoreline Lacrosse as a series of camps when he was just a sophomore in college. After he arrived at Stony Brook on lacrosse-crazed Long Island, he was around several alumni of the program who were involved in club lacrosse, recruiting the current players to run a series of evaluations on the club level.

"I thought, 'I need to take this. We need this in southeastern Connecticut,'" Rand said. "That's why we started the camps."