The Hottest Shot Around

The Terps had been upset by Baltimore's powerful Mount Washington Club team the week before, and they would lose their third game in a row to Navy the week after Virginia. At least by then they had decided that Urso was their only hope. He had four goals against the Midshipmen and. four more when Maryland finally won one against the Severna Park Club. Urso had four goals again last week as the Terps turned a previously mediocre (7-3) season into a success by handing top-rated Hopkins its first loss 19-11. It was Urso's goal after only 19 seconds of play that put his team ahead to stay.

"Frank hates to lose, even in a beer chugging contest," says Defenseman Mike Farrell. "It's the same with poker. I'll bet he's won a couple hundred dollars on the bus trips the team takes. He's always looking to see how the cards are dealt and what should be coming up. He studies everything."

He has been known to make an exception for textbooks. As a result he had trouble getting on the scholastic scoreboard as a freshman. If Beardmore had not hustled him into summer school, Urso would have spent his sophomore season as a spectator.

Urso is partly responsible for his scholastic deficiencies. As a freshman he eagerly fell in with a couple of seniors who had stacked arms academically. "They knew their way around and I didn't," he admits. He learned, and as sophomores he and roommate Tuck carried on un-repentantly. Their chief contribution to intellectual life at Maryland was that they were not around enough to disturb next-door neighbor Tom McMillen, the basketball-playing Rhodes Scholar.

It is hard to believe, but Urso was quiet and shy when Kathy Sheedy started going steady with him in the ninth grade at Brentwood (N.Y.) High. Theirs was the classic high school romance—the football star and the cheerleader.

They were married last October and have made their first home in the Goddard Space Village, a complex too full of babies and VWs to be as other-worldly as it sounds. The Ursos' living room is furnished with a 25-inch color TV and an $1,800 stereo that were wedding gifts, and with the hordes of teammates who are always in Frank's vicinity.

The salary Kathy earns as a secretary and Frank's scholarship pay for the $212-a-month two-bedroom apartment. Frank adds what he can to the kitty by working as a guard at rock concerts in nearby Capital Centre. He gets $35 a gig and the job keeps him in fighting trim. Not long ago he won four quick decisions at a raucous Led Zeppelin concert.

The arena offers Urso more than rock 'n' roll. Pro box lacrosse is played there by the Maryland Arrows, and Urso sees this hybrid of hockey, field lacrosse and roller derby as his future.

"I hear you can make anywhere from $6,000 to $20,000 a year," he says. That is not much in an age of multimillion-dollar bonuses, but the two-year-old National Lacrosse League is the best hope for a college player, even one like Urso, who is the best there is.

Understandably, Urso wants to find a way to make a living at what he does best. No problem, friends tell him. He is a natural for pro lacrosse. Beardmore, who was the Arrows' general manager last year, predicts Urso will be one of the league's stars. But what if all this rich promise comes to nothing? What would Urso do then?