Ömer Faruk Yetiştirici was hardly born with a lacrosse stick in his hand. In Istanbul, his hometown, his preferred sport was wrestling. Yetistirici said everything changed a couple of years ago, when he settled in one night to watch a movie called “Crooked Arrows,” a lacrosse film whose cast included actors from the Onondaga Nation.
“I was awestruck,” Yetistirici recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, this is it, the sport I want to play.'” The only problem: He lived in Turkey, which is a long way from the native heartland of lacrosse. Still, he was so inspired he decided to give it a shot on Google. He did a search using the words “Turkey” and “lacrosse,” and that combination inevitably leads to one name:
Pat Dougherty, a tireless advocate of the game, a Broome County native whose Turkish players have nicknamed him the sultan of lacrosse.
Through Dougherty, Yetistirici became part of the Turkish Lacrosse Association, a program accelerating so quickly that it sent a team to last year’s world field lacrosse championships in Denver.
The Turks are at Onondaga for a different kind of tourney. Friday morning, they’ll take on Switzerland as both teams begin play in the world indoor lacrosse championships, a fast, intense arena version of the game, also known as box lacrosse.
While there’s a lot to learn, many of the players share in this reaction:
“More force! More fun!” said Bora Baskan, a 17-year-old from Turkey who’s visiting the United States for the first time. Yetistirici agrees. He’s a law student who dreams of someday writing screenplays. The box game is new to him, but it only amplifies the joy he feels about lacrosse.
He said he started crying Wednesday after meeting his lacrosse hero, Bill O’Brien, who gave one of his helmets to the disbelieving Turk. When Yetistirici began speaking about what it means to play at Onondaga, a place where lacrosse is seen as a bridge to the Creator, the 20-year-old from Turkey paused and held up one hand.
“Please!” he said. “I feel my soul when I play this game!”
As you’d expect, such enthusiasm has triggered one big community embrace. The Onondagas smile with appreciation at Turkish jackets carrying the word “lakros.” Many residents gathered Wednesday behind the Turkish bench. They shouted encouragement and advice during a scrimmage at the Onondaga Nation Arena.
“They’re very eager to learn,” said Ben Miller, a 51-year-old goalie who plays on a master’s team at Onondaga – and who stepped in to take a few informal turns in goal, for Turkey. “We do what we can to pass on what we know. That’s the whole point of the games being here.”
The Turks are coached by Brian “Lab” Phillips, who’s also head coach of the Onondaga Redhawks lacrosse team. More accustomed to working with players who’ve received their first sticks while in the cradle, Phillips and his assistants – Pete Benedict, Dustin Hill and Shaydon Santos – are coaching what the Turks say is the least experienced, by far, of the 13 teams at the championships.
Caner Newton, 30, whose parents met when Newton’s American father was stationed in Turkey, played his college ball at Lees-McRae College, in North Carolina. Newton said five or six of his Turkish teammates picked up lacrosse sticks for the first time, within the last year.
“They’ve come a long way,” said Phillips, after the Turks lost 20-16 in the scrimmage against the Syracuse Stingers, an area team. “If you’d seen them last Saturday, when they got off the bus, you’d know what a difference a week makes.”
The Turks, fortunately, have an experienced core. To qualify for the world games, you must have a parent of Turkish lineage. That allows for the calming presence of such veterans as Joe Rainoldi or Anthony Terranova, who made a mark locally when he scored four goals for Rutgers in a 2013 loss to Syracuse University.
The skills of Nabil Akl, 20, also helped to keep Wednesday’s scrimmage close. Akl, whose mother is of Turkish descent, played high school lacrosse in LaFayette before moving on to the collegiate game, at Drexel.
The unifying force is Dougherty, 38, who’s both a co-captain of the Turkish team and guiding force for lacrosse, in that nation. In Florida, in the 2000s, he met a Turkish woman named Zeynep, who later married him. With the American economy struggling, the couple moved to Turkey, where Dougherty – who’d played lacrosse, in various forms, for more than 20 years – realized the game scarcely had any footprint.
Six years later, his Turkish Lacrosse Assocation helps sustain teams in three Turkish cities. Deniz Sarikaya, who was only 16 when he played at the world games in Denver, said the program always faces challenges. Finding an open area to practice can be difficult, Sarikaya said, and there are times when he and his teammates use a standard fence as a makeshift goal.
Lacrosse balls are a precious commodity. If you’re practicing, Sarikaya said, and you accidentally throw one in the sea, everything stops until someone fishes it out.
In Turkey, a nation where so many have so little, the trip to Onondaga demanded relentless fundraising. Dougherty wants the journey to have lasting resonance. He wants his players to fully appreciate the nature of these championships, how the Onondagas – whose ancestors pioneered the game – are serving as hosts to the world, for the first time.
To underline the point, the Turkish team paid a visit to Alf Jacques, an Onondaga who makes wooden sticks by hand. The task is so painstaking that it takes months, once a purchase is made, for a customers to actually hold a finished stick.
Tuesday, Jacques showed up at a new Onondaga field house while the Turkish team was practicing. He carried two sticks of head-turning beauty, the wood polished gleaming white. Jacques went over to the bench – where a Turkish flag was taped to the glass – and handed the sticks to an appreciative Dougherty.
It seems Zeynep, last spring, embarked on a secret mission to surprise her husband. Knowing what the game means to Dougherty, she quietly put in an order with Jacques, who had the sticks ready when the Turks arrived.
That was a lofty gift at Onondaga, a fitting greeting for this guest they call the sultan of lacrosse.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. Email him at skirst@syracuse.com or send him a message on Twitter.
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