RANDY METCALF/Arizona Daily Wildcat Brian Moore, the graduate assistant coach for the Laxcats, was sidelined at the beginning of the season with a calf injury.

The sun is coming down on another spring practice for the men's lacrosse team. Helmeted players flock to center field, while two captains bark out line formations. The players sit and stretch out their fatigue; the head coach, dressed in casual anonymity, joins the captains on the front line.

Bryan Moore looks on from the bleachers. A slight wind disturbs the field and appears to be doing the same to the Laxcats' assistant coach.

Correction: graduate assistant coach.

"I don't even know what that means," Moore says. "It's just nice to still be involved with the team, to be around with everyone, with lacrosse. I've always been playing lacrosse."

Moore tore a calf muscle in the first period of Arizona's season-opening victory over UCLA last season. After spot duty in games and practice over the next few weeks, the 2002 second-team All-America midfielder found himself on the tail end of a season he now wishes he had never played.

"In 20-20 hindsight, I should have redshirted, with all the things that were going on," he says. "I was 50 percent all year."

Moore has spent most of the season keeping the team books and tying up loose ends - player dues, room lists and the like - functions that have allowed the other coaches to "concentrate more on the players and running schemes," says team tri-captain Dan Young.

Head coach Kenny Broschart understands Moore's occasional frustration.

"Once you coach, the game's out of your hands," he says. "All you can do is prepare the team. When the game starts, you can't do anything about it. It's really tough, the adjustment. I know he is having a real tough time with that, especially with the success (the team has had) this year."

Having already built a rapport with some of the players before the year, Moore valued himself as being an intermediate between the players and his fellow coaches - "someone to run by to see how the head coach will think of something," as he describes it.

"It's nice to have someone you can talk to that you can interact with on a different level," he says. "There's still common interaction on their level. I like to think that it's something I can do to help the team out."

But ask him about coaching for Arizona next season, and Moore shrugs. All he knows for certain is that he'll be staying with lacrosse. Somehow.

"It's the only sport I've ever really excelled in," he says. "I'd just like to give back as much as this sport's given me."

Practice has ended. Assistant coach Matt Hunter is stationed in the goal with a goalie's stick. Players, having borne Hunter's berating all afternoon, line up to try and slip a shot in the net.

"That's the toughest part," says Moore, eying the game. "I know I could go run out there and still do pretty well."

He rises and walks toward the line, commandeering a stick from one of the players.

He stands next to Broschart as a few players fire futilely into the goal.

Eventually, it's Moore's turn. He whizzes a clean shot - right into Hunter's stick.

Moore returns to the bleachers and picks up a book. Three players approach him, informing him that they won't be able to make next morning's practice, the last before the team embarks on a three-game road trip. Moore waves them off, letting them have it only half-jokingly.

He knows what it's like to miss out on the game.