Geppi-Aikens Left Legacy That Endures

 (Loyola Athletics)

By: Keith Mills

It has been five years since Diane Geppi-Aikens lost her battle with cancer. Five years since her Loyola College women's lacrosse team inspired an entire nation of young girls with tenacious play on the field and remarkable resiliency and devotion off it. Five years since a group of special young ladies not only reached the Final Four for the first time in school history but proved that competitive sports are about so much more than just winning games and championships.

"It seems like just yesterday," Kristi Korrow said. "We were just playing for something greater and something beyond ourselves. It was infectious how Diane's positive outlook transferred to the team. It was the best experience of my life."

Korrow was a three-year starter at Loyola College and the captain of Geppi-Aikens’ last team. She is now the girls lacrosse coach at Dulaney High School, which played Hereford Tuesday for the Baltimore County championship. Dulaney had beaten Towson, 10-8, last Saturday in the renewal of the classic York Road rivalry.

"The Towson game is always such a big game," Korrow said. "One of those games that can go either way. It was a huge win for us."

Korrow is in her third year at Dulaney. She teaches English and coaches a team that is among the premier public school programs in the state. She took over for Tina McGinn after the Lions won the 2005 state championship. One year later, under Korrow, the Lions repeated as state champs although they lost to Severna Park a year ago in their bid for a third straight crown.

The Lions are championship contenders again, thanks to a coach who will always be linked to the 2003 Loyola women's lacrosse team and the inspiring story of Geppi-Aikens, who coached the entire season in a wheelchair while battling a brain tumor.

"You'd think it would be a depressing time but it wasn't," Korrow said. "She was never negative. It was so surreal at times. I've never learned so much. Diane made it fun. She wanted to laugh and enjoy life, and that's what she did."

***

Korrow played soccer and lacrosse and ran track at Mercy High School in northeast Baltimore, where she was the school's Sportswoman of the Year in 2001. She was one of coach Joy Lewandowski's leading scorers at Mercy and a member of the National Honor Society.

"She could have gone anywhere because she was really a good student," said Bill Korrow, Kristi's father. "But she chose Loyola because of Diane."

Bill Korrow grew up in Virginia. In 1970, he graduated from Towson State University and he has spent the last 38 years teaching and coaching at Loyola Blakefield. He is one of the most respected football coaches in the state, assisting Brian Abbott with the Dons after having worked with Loyola's legendary Joe Brune for 31 of Brune's 35 years as head coach.

Bill Korrow is also Kristi's assistant coach at Dulaney.

"I love it," Bill Korrow said. "I've always been around my children when they played, and I've always tried to help out as a parent. But since I've coached I tried not to be intrusive. But here I'm a true assistant, and it's great because it gives her an opportunity to tell her father what to do."

"It's great having him around," Kristi Korrow said. "I joke around with him that he works for me now. But he knows so much about coaching. He's taught me so much."

Kristi Korrow is one of seven former Loyola Greyhounds now coaching. Marianne Gioffre is the girls coach at Maryvale. Goalie Kim Lawton, whose father Bruce is the athletic director at Old Mill, is an assistant to Carin Peterson at Severna Park. Kristen Hagert is an assistant at Loyola. Tricia Dabrowski is an assistant to Janine Tucker at Johns Hopkins while Tara Singleton and Rachel Shuck are assistants to coach Liz Kelly at the University of Denver.

"That Loyola team was a real team, the entire package," Bill Korrow said. "They didn't care who did what, who got the credit, and that was a real credit to Diane and Kerri."

Kerri O'Day is now Loyola's head coach. She was Kerri Johnson, Geppi-Aikens' associate head coach, in 2003 when the Greyhounds gained national recognition by nearly winning the national championship for their ailing coach.

Korrow, leading scorer Suzanne Eyler and Gioffre were captains of a team that played with an incredible sense of purpose and togetherness, emotion and commitment.

"Diane always talked about 'little Loyola,'" Korrow said, "and how we always needed to stay together. The family atmosphere that Diane created was amazing."

"I think Kristi coaches that way now," Bill Korrow said. "Last year we had a very high-powered team, but all of those girls worked together. No one cared who got the credit."

"I talk about our Loyola team to our girls now all the time," Kristi Korrow said. "It was so much a part of who I have become, professionally and personally. It's not about the individual. It's about what everybody does. You should be just as proud if your teammate breaks a record because that's a reflection on the entire team."

Nine members of last year's Dulaney team are playing college lacrosse this season: Kristen and Kate Horsman (Boston College), Makenzie Worthington and Holly Burman (Delaware), Hope McIntyre (Dartmouth) Sara Miller (Goucher), Dana Poist (New Hampshire), Abby Wah (Louisville) and Mary Heneberry (Loyola). Next year, Mary's sister Ana will also attend Loyola.

Ana Heneberry scored five goals in last Saturday's 10-8 win over Towson, which raised Dulaney's record to 10-3 and earned the Lions a berth in Tuesday's Baltimore County championship game. She is one of six senior members of this year's team who will play Division I lacrosse next year in college: Blair King (Delaware), Cailin Colegrove (Duquesne), Emma Larkin (American) and Joy Oberland (George Mason).

"I try and let them know what it's going to be like next year," Kristi said. "I tell them the stuff I put them through is nothing compared to what it's going to be like. I tell them all sorts of stories about Loyola and Diane. Most of them know who she was."

***

In 1995, Geppi-Aikens first learned she had cancer, but she battled it into remission through the late 1990s. By December 2002, however, she was beginning to lose the battle.

"That's the first time we saw her in a wheelchair," Bill Korrow said. "And it was a big shock to all of us."

The spring season began for Loyola March 4 with a 16-4 win over UMBC. One week later, the team was ranked No. 1 in the country after wins over North Carolina and Princeton, the defending NCAA champion. The Greyhounds won 14 games in a row before they lost to Virginia, 10-9, at home April 29, but four days later they beat Maryland in College Park in a game that defined their season.

Maryland was the standard by which every other team in women's college lacrosse were judged. Cindy Timchal's Terrapins had won seven straight championships from 1995 to 2001 and were all but unbeatable at home. But not on May 3, 2003, a Sunday afternoon to remember as Eyler scored four goals, Lawton made 15 saves and Loyola stunned the Terps on their home field, despite a rare penalty from senior defender Kristi Korrow.

By early May, Geppi-Aikens was struggling to deal with the pain and side effects of the disease. She was limited to her wheelchair, but she had only missed one game all year.

"I think she willed herself through that season," Bill Korrow said. "She had some goals she was determined to reach. She wanted to get to the Final Four. She wanted to see her oldest son Michael graduate from high school. Her spirit, her personality. She was always upbeat, and the girls on the team thought so much of her. They tried their best not to let on that she was sick. If she was going to be that strong, they knew they had to be."

Then came Kristi Korrow's penalty against Maryland, which drew a rare yellow card from the officials and a memorable response from Geppi-Aikens.

"Kristi never got a yellow card," Bill Korrow said. "When she did, Diane wheeled herself out onto the field and let the officials know what she thought. I can still see that like it was today -- the official just stood there and let Diane have her say. As it turned out, it was the turning point in the game and we won."

The Maryland win and Geppi-Aikens' battle with cancer drew national attention. Sports Illustrated, ESPN, NBC, CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times did major stories on the Loyola women, who handled the scrutiny, not to mention the day-to-day battle their coach was confronting with the disease, with incredible class, poise and dignity.

"How could we show pity for her when she never did?" Kristi Korrow said. "She was never negative, and she was always trying to take the focus off of her. It was definitely hard to deal with, but she made it so easy for us."

The Greyhounds eventually earned a berth in the 2003 women's Final Four at Syracuse University. Before their semifinal game with Princeton in the Carrier Dome, Geppi-Aikens wheeled herself out to midfield with an army of still photographers and local and national television cameras by her side.

Loyola lost to Princeton in the semifinals, 5-3, but the team had won the respect of the entire country and certainly a generation of young women here in Baltimore who are playing the game of lacrosse today because of that magical season. One month later, Geppi-Aikens lost her battle with cancer.

"I remember calling Marianne and Suzanne," Kristi Korrow said. "We laughed and cried. And then we called our teammates and told them. We all got together that day and told stories and shared memories."

For Kristi Korrow and her family it was also a sad reminder of what happened 10 years earlier. In 1993, Kristi's brother Billy died of complications due to a blood clot. Billy would have been 28 years old last Sunday when the family gathered at Loyola Blakefield for the 15th Billy Korrow Memorial 5K Run. Bill and Jane Korrow were among the 400 family and friends who ran the 3.2-mile race (Bill in 35 minutes) as were several members of Kristi's Dulaney girls' lacrosse team.

Since 1993, the Billy Korrow race has helped send 19 boys to Loyola Blakefield on full or partial scholarships.

"It's somewhat bittersweet," Bill Korrow said. "It's hard in that it reminds us that he's gone. But to see all the people come out and support this is very uplifting."

"I think because of what happened to Billy, I looked at Diane with a different perspective,” Kristi Korrow said. “I was 10 when my brother died, and Diane was the first really close person I lost since my brother."

***

Geppi-Aikens would be 45 years old today. The four children she left behind are doing well. Michael graduated from Loyola last spring while Jessica will graduate from Loyola in just a few weeks. Melissa is a senior at Mercy who is headed to Loyola next year, and Shannon is an eighth grade student who will attend Mercy in the fall.

Geppi-Aikens was always proud of her children and incredibly proud of what her lacrosse team did for Loyola College five years ago. She would be even prouder now that many have followed in her footsteps and are coaching other young women.

"I was really fortunate being local," Kristi Korrow said. "We were able to spend more time with each other after the season and just hang out. We were all so close-knit. We truly were a family."

Issue 3.19: May 8, 2008