`Run, sun and fun!' Well, two out of three ain't bad ...

While Bermudians shake and shiver as they seek relief from the Arctic blast that has swept over the Island this week, five visiting female lacrosse teams are revelling in the conditions. Ones which represent severe contrast to sub-zero temperatures being experienced among the northeast coast of the United States.

Indeed, so it was that members representing renowned academic institutions such as Holy Cross, St. Bonaventure, Duquesne, Monmouth and Siena could be seen frolicking around the converted soccer pitch at Bermuda College as if it were the middle of summer, wearing little more than shorts and T-shirts.

Of course there is the key matter of playing and winning matches in preparation for the upcoming season.

"Bermuda speaks for itself in terms of the beautiful weather and history that it has, and it's a good opportunity for teams from the northeast, which right now is getting three feet of snow dumped on us, to get some warm weather games in on grass, on full fields,'' said Michael Antonaccio, Athletic Media Relations officer for Holy Cross, who told how just last week the team found themselves outside going through drills in single-digit temperatures, all the while wondering if they were direct descendants of Frosty The Snowman.

"A lot of teams haven't been able to play matches with the weather we've been having. You can't get outside to do a lot of practising and scrimmaging or get into game situations.

"This is a great opportunity for a bunch of teams to come down, experience all that Bermuda has to offer and at the same time get in some competitive lacrosse. It also allows us to spread the word about what lacrosse has to offer to people that don't know a whole lot about it.'' The local competition sees teams playing an uneven schedule of matches under a round robin format.

For Holy Cross, according to Antonaccio, the issue is to get a few `Ws' under the belt and to have momentum heading into the Patriot League's regular season, where the hope is to do better than last year's fourth-place finish.

"Last year was a bit of a down year, where we had a lot of close losses, and we're trying to translate that into close wins this year,'' said Antonaccio.

However, this is Spring break and on the other side of the on-field action is the off-field activities, which provide a cultural learning aspect to the venture, with Bermuda offering up a taste of island living to the young women.

"This is the Department of Tourism's annual Spring break and our objective is to get as many colleges as we can down for the period,'' said acting sports manager Carlos Durham. "In the past we used to get 3,000 and 4,000 to Bermuda, while now we find that a lot of them are going to Florida where the weather is a little warmer, and they're getting value for money, which is one of the big issues.

"We're trying to get the College Weeks back up and running again. So the intent in having lacrosse here, which we haven't for the past five or six years, is to build the momentum back up in that, hopefully, next year we can have even more teams.

"What happens is that they go back, pass the word on, they graduate, get married, come back, bring their family and this obviously helps us as a tourist destination. "It's something that used to be an intrinsic part of local tourism and is something, like I said, we are looking to restore.'' Photo on page 23