BALTIMORE — A crowd of 250 for an NCAA Division I men’s lacrosse game would not usually draw much attention. But at Hampton University, the number of people who showed up to watch a 15-6 loss against Virginia Military Institute set a school record.
The accomplishment was not lost on the players.
“It means a lot, because at HBCUs, they don’t know too much about lacrosse, much less have seen a game before,” said sophomore midfielder Ethan Mitchell of Ellicott City, Md. “So the fact that you see your classmates and teachers watching you perform, it’s actually pretty motivating.
“Maybe five or six years from now, the crowds will fill the stands like they do for football games.”
While lacrosse draws its origin from Native American peoples, its athletes and fan base in the U.S. are predominantly white. Hampton is one of a few historically Black colleges and universities pushing for diversity in the sport. Delaware State University and Howard University in Washington, D.C., have Division I teams on the women’s side, and the University of District of Columbia has men’s and women’s programs at the Division II level.
The ranks of Black lacrosse athletes — and efforts to recruit them — are growing. Some players and coaches, however, say there’s still much room for progress and acceptance in the sport.
Last month, a group of white male fans subjected the Howard women’s team to racist taunts and barbs just before the start of their season opener at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C.
“It’s disappointing. But for me, it’s not surprising,” said Bison senior midfielder Sydney Saunders, a Baltimore resident.
“It is changing, but it is a predominantly white sport. I’ve never felt comfortable in this sport — but just being at Howard and in that moment at Presbyterian, I felt safe with my team.”
Black participation in college lacrosse has grown slowly. An NCAA survey released last year showed that the percentage of Black men’s players grew from 2.7% in 2012 to 3.9% in 2021. Over that same span, the percentage of Black women’s players rose from 2.8% to 3.3%.
Liz Robertshaw, executive director of the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association, said the organization is trying to help increase those numbers by better tapping into the pool of young, talented players of color. Their strategies include fast-tracking film of players from youth groups such as Harlem Lacrosse and City Lax to coaches, offering the association’s recruiting services at no cost to the players and organizing more club tournaments in nontraditional locations.
“We’re making incremental steps,” she said. “I think there’s more conversation about it. There’s more intention behind making sure that some of our players of color have more access to the game and more access to recruiting, and our coaches are opening their eyes even more to saying, ‘Hey, we need more diversity on our teams.’ ”
The first HBCU to play lacrosse was Morgan State University in Baltimore, which competed as a Division II men’s program from 1970 to 1981. The “Ten Bears,” as they were called, were ranked in the top 10 four times from 1970 to 1975 and upset No. 1 Washington and Lee University in 1975 in Lexington, Va.
Lacrosse at HBCUs went dormant until the Howard women played their first season in 2006. The Delaware State women began in 2013, and UDC men and women followed in 2014.
Lacrosse is in its fledgling phase financially at the HBCUs, and coaching staffs are smaller than those at other Division I programs.
At Hampton in Virginia, where lacrosse became a varsity sport in 2016, coach Chazz Woodson said he has almost eight scholarships to divide among his players — well short of the 12.6 scholarships that’s the standard for Division I programs. And while many universities cover travel expenses, such as transportation, lodging and food, Saunders said her family provided a team meal on a recent Howard road trip.
But Woodson, who starred as an attackman at Brown, six Major League Lacrosse franchises and the Premier Lacrosse League’s Redwoods before returning to his native Hampton Roads, Va., to helm the Hampton Pirates, said the program is evolving.
“We’re in a good space, but I think it’s still really early for us,” he said. “This is our first year in a conference, this is our first year playing a full Division I schedule, and we’ve got a team loaded with young guys who until this year, had not played a college game.”
As the incident involving Howard and Presbyterian demonstrated, however, hurdles exist for Black players and coaches.
Last spring in Carroll County, a Manchester Valley High School lacrosse player said an opponent called him the N-word every time he made a good play during a game versus Francis Scott Key High School.
Mitchell, the Hampton player from Howard County, recalled an official throwing a flag against a high school teammate for confronting an opponent who used the N-word. He said he heard opponents on club teams make monkey noises and use what he described as “sly words.”
“But they only do it when you’re doing something right or something they don’t like,” he said. “So I took it with a grain of salt and moved on. So it didn’t bother me too much, but it was definitely noticeable.”
Pamella Jenkins, the coach at Delaware State, said she hasn’t dealt with blatant racial discrimination. But she has encountered microaggressions, such as an official asking her white assistant coach if she was the head coach, or fans doing a double-take when they see her team.
Jenkins said those incidents have strengthened her resolve and that of her players.
“Unfortunately, we’re so accustomed to this type of adversity on a daily basis that it’s just become one other thing we have to go through and overcome,” she said. “But we know that if we can persevere through it, we could be setting a new standard. So we really just focus on that. What’s our end goal? What are we trying to do? That, to us, is bigger than going through all of these little hurdles.”
Howard coach Karen Healy-Silcott didn’t view the incident at Presbyterian as a setback for the sport.
“For us, we just wanted to play lacrosse,” she said. “So we put everything aside, and I said, ‘I’m going to deal with this. Don’t you worry, but we’re here to play a game, and they’re not going to take our fun thing away. If we left or if we let them affect our game, they win.’”
Overall, Healy-Silcott said the lacrosse community has been “overwhelmingly supportive.”
“That really makes me happy about the direction that lacrosse is going and people paying attention to it and not letting it die down. I think it’s important that it continues to be a part of the conversation,” she said.
One tool Healy-Silcott now employs to emphasize the sport’s diversity is a handcrafted, traditional wooden lacrosse stick made by the Anishinaabe people, who settled in the Great Lakes region thousands of years ago. She said the stick evokes a respect for the game.
“The stick arrived [March 3], and we used it pre-practice to bring on more discussion about diversity, adversity, growth and strength. We plan to bring this with us to games as a reminder to play as one united team, no matter what challenges are thrown at us.”
The growth of lacrosse at the HBCU level might depend on the programs’ successes on the field. Conference championships and NCAA tournament berths would attract high school recruits being pursued by traditional powerhouses and generate more interest from fans and alumni who can donate to the schools.
Other HBCUs are monitoring the sport’s progress. As recently as 2015, a five-team field billed as the HBCU Lacrosse Championship included men’s club teams from Morgan State, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Howard, Hampton and Morehouse College. Woodson, the Hampton coach, said he has heard alumni and boosters of schools such as Morehouse, North Carolina Central University, and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University have expressed interest in establishing varsity programs.
Jenkins, the Delaware State coach, said one sign that would encourage her is putting out a team that can compete with every opponent.
“For us, especially this year, the goal is to keep the other team’s starters out there the whole time and have to compete,” she said. “I think once we get to that level where players realize that they have to scout, they have to prepare and get ready for us, and know that it’s actually going to be challenging and not a cakewalk, that would be a real, ‘Aha! We made it,’ kind of thing.”
How long it will take the HBCUs to reach sustained levels of success is uncertain. But Healy-Silcott summed up the sentiments of her peers when she reaffirmed her commitment to Howard.
“It’s why I’m here,” she said. “If I didn’t believe that I could do it or if I didn’t see a purpose in this job, it can be thankless sometimes. So I see a really big picture here — growing the game, building this program and creating change in our sport.”
