MIKE Black weaves his van through the East London side streets like he’s been doing it all his life. He gives a running commentary as he goes, pointing out local landmarks, discussing the finer points of the congestion zone, and talking about the schools in which he has been coaching for the last six months.

Black’s roots are in New Jersey and Boston, but if it weren’t for the accent there would be no way to tell whether he comes from Manchester, Massachusetts or the Middle East.

And it’s obvious he likes it that way.

‘Most people see the shaved head and the beard and assume that I’m Muslim,’ he said. ‘The first time I went to a pub in London, there was a guy at the end of the bar who made it pretty obvious he didn’t like the way I look. After a while I just walked up to him and asked if there was a problem. An hour later I was teaching him how to throw left-handed off a street sign outside.’

He grinned and glanced across the van at me. ‘That was the first time I used my new Pop equipment.’

Black is a Lacrosse Development Officer, but not in the traditional sense. He coaches juniors and plays at Buckhurst Hill on the weekend, but the children he works with during the week are not part of a feeder programme into a local club, because there isn’t one. Nor are they playing lacrosse as an alternative to a selection of other sports. ‘Most of the schools I teach at don’t have any athletics or P.E. Some have football, but they never actually teach it. They just give the kids a ball.’

We pull up to Cannon Barnet Primary School in the heart of Tower Hamlets, a Bangladeshi community just around the corner from the East Aldgate tube station. The school is secured by a system of gates combining CCTV cameras and intercoms, but Mike is now a familiar figure on Mondays so we have little trouble getting in.

Watching Mike working with his first class at Cannon Barnet gives some perspective into what sport can offer to ‘hard-to-reach’ school children. The children come tearing out of the school building, encircling the American as if clamouring for an autograph. What they are really after are the Pop sticks, each one representing a ticket to 40 minutes of fresh air.

The lesson was game-based, as Mike is preparing a team from each year group to represent the school at a tournament he is organizing at a community centre the following week.

‘I ran my first tournament six weeks after I started running sessions. There were 36 kids, and we ended with an overtime game in the final. We had MVPs and medals for all the finalists, which everybody loved,’ he says. ‘That was when I realized that maybe I had a knack for working with these kids. It kind of took some of the pressure off.’

Regardless of how well one lesson goes, the next is always a fresh challenge, and before long Mike and an accompanying teacher are engaged in a battle of wits with a younger class that is less than attentive to instruction. Maintaining the peace is a job all in itself at times at Cannon Barnet, but Black, son of a Maryland football player and a big man in his own right, never raises his voice and takes it all in his stride.

It ’s a hard-knock life

Mike’s last school session comes to a close, but his schedule doesn’t end there. As part of his contract he has been charged with starting a Tower Hamlets U-12 District team, taking the best Pop players from the various schools in his jurisdiction and giving them a taste of the field game.

Adding an evening programme to his schools and club commitments creates an intense schedule for Mike. With the Buckhurst Hill juniors practising on Sundays he does not actually get a day off on a weekly basis. Yet he is quick to point out all the support he is receiving from the Local Sports Partnership.

‘I have a great advantage here,’ he says. ‘There is sufficient funding for all aspects of my job, and the partnership is committed not only to providing access to the sport, but to making sure that sport takes hold for the long term. They make sure that I have what I need, that I am dressed for the part, and that my kids are dressed for the part. That really lets me approach my job in a professional manner.’

Mike ultimately wants to build a legacy for Tower Hamlets, something that he can look back on in a number of years time. Perhaps he will return again next year to continue what he has started, but right now he is concentrating on the next step on the ladder: ‘The District Programme will be interesting, as it’s completely out of the school setting.

Tower Hamlets is traditionally a cricket and a rugby town, so if the kids choose to come down and play we know we are having some success getting lacrosse through to them.’