Take a peek at Navy coach Richie Meade's office, and you'll see three pictures of things that have absolutely nothing to do with lacrosse.

Meade is a military history buff, and has a reason for displaying all three.

* The Angle at Gettysburg: "If you believe in a cause, you can do anything."

* Statue of the Soldiers' Monument at West Point: "It says 'The lives and destinies of valiant Americans are going to be entrusted to your skill and leadership.' That's really what we do. At the end of the day, when they graduate, it's what they're going to have to do."

* Picture of the Marines planting the flag at Iwo Jima: "That reminds me young Americans can do anything if you ask them to. If you push them to."

The Iwo Jima display might be the most important of the bunch. Meade can still remember visiting the Iwo Jima memorial as a kid. In every Power Point presentation he does for the team, he makes sure to include the famous image from World War II at some juncture.

So imagine his surprise --- and emotion --- upon receiving a package recently from former Navy midfielder Steve Looney. Inside was three large water bottles filled with sand from the beach at Iwo Jima --- replacing the Iwo Jima sand Meade gradually gave away more than a decade ago.

Meade said Looney needed to go about four hours out of his way to make the sidetrip, and was only on the island for roughly a half-hour. And as a result, Meade has a keepsake he could find many uses for.

"On occasion, I have sprinkled it on the field before the game," Meade said. "I probably haven't done that in 10 years, but I have a lot of it now."

Not to mention a full head of steam to talk about a meaningful moment of history. Some other snippets from our conversation after Navy's walkthrough in Annapolis yesterday:

* "Those guys did the hard part. If you know anything about what happened there --- not the historical part of it or that it happened in World War II. But if you read about it, 10 Marines fighting against the Japanese and attacking a pillbox. They weren't fighting for the United States of America. They were fighting for the guy next to them and trying to survive. That's a pretty powerful message for these guys, so I appreciate Steven doing that and sending it to me."

* "I'm 54 years old, and I don't get it. I don't know how they did it. Now they have movies and all this other stuff, but I'm talking about 20 years ago I started reading about this stuff. When you try to comprehend what they did, it's incomprehensible. The third day of the Battle of Iwo Jima, the 28th regiment of the Fifth Division had surrounded Mount Suribachi and they were going to assault Mount Suribachi. That morning there were supposed to be tanks that led the assault, and the tanks got caught on the beach. At 8:15 in the morning, they waited five more minutes, the tanks didn't show up and they went anyway. Now they just ran forward against the most heavily defended position in the history of warfare, just 19 year olds against that. So when they're complaining about how their foot hurts, it's like 'Shut up.' That's why I do it. If they can do that, these guys can run in the morning at 6:15."

* "The longer we get away from it, we forget about what they really mean," Meade said as he pointed to the battles and campaigns listed on the stadium facade. "You think about all the lives that were invested, it's a pretty inspiring thing to walk out here. If anybody should understand that, we should."

--- Patrick Stevens