Once, a boy who didn't make the freshman football team at Loyola High School was given a chance to play lacrosse. The game demanded enthusiasm and desire, and the boy did well.

Today he is the school's director of admissions and its varsity lacrosse coach.

The life of 47-year-old Joe McFadden is like the canvas of an impressionist painter. Stand up close and you can see the individual elements -- family, work, lacrosse. Move back and the separate brush strokes merge into a singular life in which all three are firmly interwoven.

From morning till night, McFadden spends his time mentoring young people, whether it be the boys he interviews and admits to Loyola, the boys he directs in the private school's lacrosse program or his own children.

On a recent morning, McFadden walked into his office, as usual, at 7: 30, and began preparing to meet Patrick Greenwell, 10, a fifth-grader at St. Joseph's School in Baltimore.

During the year's admission process, Loyola received about 425 applications for 110 spots in the ninth grade and another 160 applications for sixth grade. McFadden expected to accept 70 to 75 sixth-graders.

"There's no question that deciding on who is accepted is the most difficult part of both my jobs," says McFadden. "But selecting the lacrosse team pales beside the attempt at fairness that goes into selecting the students who come to Loyola."

Patrick was one of the boys who had been accepted, but he and his parents were still deciding if Loyola was right for him. During his visit, he would be teamed with a Loyola sixth-grader for the day.

With a smile that reaches into his eyes behind his glasses, McFadden let Patrick know the classes he'd have and told him, "We're going to keep you busy."

Sunlight streams through a wall of French windows in McFadden's office. A lacrosse stick, a ball in its webbing, leans against the fireplace. Papers on his desk witness to administrative work. Family photos sit on the mantel and desk.

On the walls are lacrosse memorabilia -- a plaque of appreciation for his dedication to the Loyola program, a caricature of him with an intense look and the caption "Bear down -- and move the ball!"

John Stewart, the varsity coach from 1970 until he retired from the job in 1981, recognizes that expression.

McFadden is "very intense on the lacrosse field," he says. "He's totally focused. But, really, that's not any different from the way he is when he's working on admissions. He's very methodical. On the lacrosse field, his practices are like that. His game plans are like that."

McFadden understands Loyola's underlying Jesuit principles. When his job demands he sell the school as a good place to be educated and build character, he says he speaks from the heart.

"I don't see it as different from coaching," he says. "The selling aspect, the marketing aspect, you have to have a great deal of emotion. When fifth-graders come to visit, our excitement about being here is part of it."

But it is when McFadden heads for the gym that his footsteps quicken.

"It's tremendous therapy," he says, "to leave the paperwork side of the job, to get to the physical side and to get out and giggle with the kids."

Coach of life's lessons

A stiff wind is blowing across the lacrosse field but McFadden hardly notices.

There's a scrimmage in 90 minutes and he's intent on preparing the field. He will be out here nearly four and a half hours, getting the equipment ready, coaching, putting the equipment away, all the while, listening to the kids.

"Mr. McFadden is real concerned about our personal lives and our school work," says junior Ryan Madairy, 16, who participates in the lacrosse program. "He wants us to be open about the things that concern us."

When the scrimmage is over and the kids are gone, he is back in the building, sometimes sweeping the floor before locking up and heading home.

"You see what he's like, out there lining the field in freezing weather," says varsity assistant coach Michael McTeague, who previously coached the JV. "Last year, before my junior varsity team played in the championship game, the maintenance crew cut the grass on the field the day before, but hadn't raked it. The day of my game, I look out the window and he's out there raking the field for me -- for our game, not his. And that's an awfully big area for one man with a hand rake.

"But that's Joe."

McFadden is in charge of the private school's entire lacrosse program -- 150 students on five teams. But he makes it clear he's not a saint.

"I get loud," he says. "I get loud with my own kids and on a bigger area of an outdoor field, I let [my players] know if they're not playing up to expectations -- and they're not the same expectations for everybody. There are some who think I've chewed them out pretty good."

In McFadden's case, loud isn't bad, either. It's balance that counts.

"Joe always used the same tone of voice," says former player Pat Kelly, 23, who now teaches at Loyola. "He'd yell at you for not doing something right, but then, when you did it right, he'd yell at you in the same tone again, but he'd be saying, 'Exactly, that's exactly what I want you to do.' His coaching is basically teaching. He teaches life."

McFadden's philosophy is that every kid on the field deserves equal respect, but "ability determines the opportunities you get in the game. It's a fact of life, on and off the lacrosse field."

Part of the life lessons McFadden imparts are about controlling emotions and acting with humility.

Directing his offense, he shouts, "I can live with you missing a scoop, but not if you give up on it ... Let's get the ball up in the air. Don't carry it ... It's all right. Don't hang your head, we'll get it. We'll get it."

A matter of family

Joe and Meg McFadden were married 25 years ago last July. They marked the anniversary by taking their children to Disney World.

"Joe said the kids have been a big part of our lives, and they should celebrate with us," says Meg of the trip.

McFadden felt he had a lot to celebrate. He had been lucky to know Meg as a teen-ager, when he was at Loyola and she at Towson Catholic, and then to win her heart while they were still in college.

They married shortly after he graduated, while she was still a sophomore at Towson State.

And he was lucky from the beginning that Meg liked lacrosse because it has been a major part of their lives at home, too. All four of their children -- sons Marty, 18, Timmy, 15, and Denny, 12, and daughter Kelly, 7 -- were playing the game by age 5.

But even before their children were born, McFadden says he spent so much time coaching rec league lacrosse and assisting the various Loyola teams, that he got to practice parenting on other people's children.

"I like kids very much," he says. "They're a challenge and I feel I have a better grasp as time has gone along.

"In my professional and coaching career, I've seen a lot of families interact. You see one family send three or four good kids along and you watch and learn from what they do."

McFadden involves his family in Loyola lacrosse when he can. They ride the bus with him on an annual team trip to a tournament in Connecticut. They were one of the host families when the Australian 19-and-under team came for a series of games early last month and when a team from a Jesuit school in Chicago visited last week.

"I know how important sports is to [my players and my kids], but the job is to broaden their interests. I know great things can happen from participating."

Learning to Give Back

McFadden's on-field demeanor is traceable to his days at Villanova University, when he played for a club team, a team not funded by the university's athletic department, under the direction of 70-year-old lacrosse Hall of Famer Avery Blake.

"There wasn't a head varsity coach hired by the school," says McFadden. "But there was Avery Blake Sr. Retired. A little stooped, running up and down the field with us, giving us structure. ... He had no hook into us. He was just the ultimate figure, a guy committed for the long term, flexible enough to bend, but strong enough that we gave a little, too."

Now McFadden mentors the next generation, and Blake comes quickly to his mind when he's asked to explain his devotion to both the game and the kids.

"When I was growing up," says McFadden, "lacrosse gave an opportunity to kids who weren't the best athletes. You could hustle and work on your stick skills. It was a game I had a chance to participate in. It made me part of the family here. ... And Avery Blake Sr., it was incredible that he did the things he did.

"I want to help others to be involved in the sport."

The game has changed a lot since McFadden's days. Kids begin learning techniques at a younger age. By the time they arrive at Loyola, they're already very skilled.

"But I always have a couple guys who might not be able to play other sports," McFadden says. "It was a game that enabled me to perform, to develop. I see what I do as a chance to give something back."

Pub Date: 5/05/99