If you are born a Simmons or a Kaestner or a Corrigan or a Morrill, you are destined to be a lacrosse player. It's in the genes. Those families have been major figures in the sport for generations.

The Wittelsbergers are such a family. They go back to the 1940s and the original Maryland Lacrosse Club organized by Bill Wittelsberger. I can still picture him on the sidelines at M.L.C. games at Herring Run Park on Harford Road in Baltimore.

Mr. Witt was a tall, soft-spoken man generally wearing a raincoat. In his pocket he had money for the refs, plus the phone number of the public parks employee with the key to the locker room, in case the players were locked out. His sons Ken and Ray Wittelsberger were stars on the team. The club played through the decades and by the 1980s the Maryland L. C. and the Long Island L.C. were the two best club teams in the country. Soon, professional Major League Lacrosse would come into being and elite club lacrosse would end.

Into this family, Mary Wittelsberger was born in 1988. She is the granddaughter of Ray Wittelsberger, one of the greatest players ever to play at Loyola College, now Loyola University. Her cousin Franz Wittelsberger, son of Ken, was an All-American at Johns Hopkins in the 1970s. Franz was the all-time leading scorer at Hopkins with 151 goals when he graduated in 1976. Mr. Witt was her great grandfather.

So everybody knew Mary would be a lacrosse player. Her father, Ray Jr., handed Mary her first stick at age 6. They just didn't know that one day she'd be taking the game to El Salvador.

After Hereford High School, Mary went to Georgetown and played for coach Ricky Fried. I've never known a Georgetown woman who didn't love playing for Ricky. Mary is no exception. Playing for the Hoyas, Mary had an ACL injury and knee surgery. Four months later, she was back playing lacrosse.

Mary joined the Peace Corps. That led her to a 27-month tour in El Salvador, a tiny Central American nation known for its Pacific Ocean beaches and mountainous landscape. In the small village of San Luis de la Reina, Mary taught school children English, exercise ... and lacrosse.

"I started the kids on a wall," Mary says. "They were interested in lacrosse, but their passion is for soccer. A few hundred got to experience lacrosse and handle a stick, but they couldn't wait to get to soccer."

Spending two years in El Salvador was a life-changing experience. That close to the equator, the weather is always hot and sticky. No English is spoken, but Mary was a Spanish major at Georgetown and is fluent in the language.

"Children in El Salvador are only required to go to school through sixth grade," she says. "The men work on the farms. The girls marry and raise families. The whole experience there has made me grateful I was born in the U.S. with all the opportunities we have here."

Now that Mary has completed her Peace Corps duties, she has returned to Baltimore and is now a Spanish teacher at Mount St. Joseph, an all-boys high school. Of course she's eager to become active again in lacrosse. I'm sure she will. After all, she's a Wittelsberger.