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The girls lacrosse players from Raleigh's Broughton High School and their parents met for a pot-luck dinner Friday night to celebrate the team's successes -- making it to the second round of the state playoffs and increasing fan attendance -- and to look forward to next year.

"I think it's going to catch on," said graduating senior Rachel Rice, 18, the team's top scorer and most valuable player. "It's an awesome sport."

Fighting a stigma

Lacrosse has received widespread attention lately, but not the kind its players want.

The sport's rise has come amid one of its deepest injuries: the unresolved scandal involving the Duke University lacrosse team.

Three Duke players face criminal charges of kidnapping and raping a woman hired to dance at a March 13 party in a Durham house where three of the team's captains lived.

The men maintain their innocence and say the accuser is lying.

Some local lacrosse players, parents and coaches worry that the Duke incident has hurt the sport.

"This is a scandal that affects all of us," said Chris Estes of Raleigh, a coach of the Durham Tunes middle school team and a former UNC-Chapel Hill lacrosse player. "We worry that parents will say, 'I don't want my kid playing that sport.' Lacrosse has a bit of a rowdy reputation. It's up to us to help these kids change that."

Others lacrosse veterans hope the national attention will prompt people to learn about the sport and to play it. And some have turned the episode into a lesson.

"We've used the Duke situation as a positive," said Tim Slone, 48, the Raleigh Franciscan School's lacrosse team manager and a research manager at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park. "Our coaches sat our players down and told them: 'Hey, look, you've got a responsibility to yourself and your family, you've got a responsibility to your team, and you've got a responsibility to your school.' "

Most young players, though, say they're not focused on the Duke saga -- they're having too much fun playing the sport.

"I feel it's putting a negative image on lacrosse," said Michael Wheelan of Cary, 13, who has played the sport for four years. "People should come out and watch one game. Come see what good lacrosse is about."

After a game a week ago at Raleigh's Dorothea Dix soccer fields, Weston Sadovy, an eighth- grader at Raleigh's St. Timothy's School and a player on the city-league Raptors team, lingered to practice his stick-handling skills. While talking about his love for the sport he embraced after giving up soccer and basketball, he twirled and dipped his stick, tossing a lacrosse ball under his left leg and up into the stick's pocket.

"Most of the people at my school think I'm a little hard-core," said Weston, 14, as he tossed the ball to himself over and over.

That might well change.

"A year ago, most of the people at my school didn't know what lacrosse was," Weston said. "Now just about everybody does."

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