Raul Altreche, a goalkeeper on the Amherst College men's lacrosse squad, didn't begin playing team sports until high school, where he was introduced to football, wrestling and lacrosse.

From each he gleaned something different. Football honed his "don't quit" attitude. Wrestling taught him about his physical capabilities. Then there was lacrosse.

"Lacrosse is a blast. When you are playing goalie, it's one of the best feelings when you make saves," he said. "The whole game slows down. You just made a save. You were controlling the defense and now you are starting up the offense."

As it happens, the second string netminder for the Lord Jeffs is something of an expert on new beginnings -- not just on the field, but in life as well.

Altreche was born in New York's South Bronx. His early years were happy ones, complete with loving parents and two brothers. But things began to change. His father succumbed to drug addiction and died of AIDS when Altreche was five. His mother also died of AIDS not long after his father.

Without the guiding hands of parents, over the course of the next few years, he and his brothers were bounced around among family members. They lived in extreme poverty, managing necessities on a meager $1,200 a month. Altreche moved and switched school systems so frequently that he missed large chunks of the school year, sometimes as many as six or seven months at a time. Consequently, he couldn't read as recently as the eighth grade.

But it was the memory of his parents and a realization that his family loved him that inspired Altreche to change his circumstances.

"I always wanted to make my parents proud of me. My mother was in the hospital, on her deathbed, and she decided to get up and still do things and help others. After you know that, what excuse do you have to not do this or not do that? She set the tone and I don't want to anything less," said Altreche, whose goal was to get out of the cycle of poverty.

"Nothing was happening where I was at then," he said. "People don't see that there's something more and at the same time there isn't an opportunity for them to get out. So you either create opportunity or you get lucky."

There were generous helpings of both opportunity and luck working on Altreche's behalf, in addition to an undauntingly positive attitude.

"If I didn't have a positive attitude all my life, I would have been some kid selling drugs in the street because I wouldn't have seen a way out," he said.

With the help of junior high school teachers and guidance counselors, Altreche improved his reading skills and eventually won acceptance into "A Better Chance," a program that takes students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds and plants them in educational environments that support their academic development. As part of the ABC program, he also was accepted at Daniel Hand High School in Connecticut, far removed from his former life in New York.

Altreche blossomed in his new, albeit dramatically different, environment. In addition to excelling in the classroom, he also was introduced to team sports, including lacrosse.

These days, the future is decidedly bright for Altreche, a talkative, earnest junior political science major. He has clearly not forgotten his roots, nor has he abandoned his desire to make things better for himself and others. When he was younger, he dreamed of becoming an engineer. He now seems, not surprisingly, more bent on working on building, creating and fixing the social landscape.

"I'm really interested in people and how they work," said Altreche, who spent this past summer at Harvard University, where he taught in a summer camp for elementary and junior high students from troubled neighborhoods in Boston. The experience not only served as a reminder of just how far he has come, it also offered him insight into a possible future involving work with children and youth.

Aside from the motivation of wanting to make his parents proud, Altreche said knowing that there were people who believed in him -- like his grandmother, his aunt and his older brother, has made a difference in his life.

"When I came to high school, instead of me looking up to them, they were looking up to me. In high school, it shocked me. It set the tone. I realized that if they are looking up to me, I gotta keep doing something. I can't just stop," he said.