In Defense of Lacrosse

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the story that has been capturing the national headlines and in turn, horrifying girls, students, and parents everywhere for the past two weeks has been the slaying of Yeardley Love, a fourth-year student on the U.Va. women's lacrosse team. When I first found out about it the morning that she died, I was shocked. I was shocked for the obvious reasons - that I am a girl, who realizes more and more the lull of comfort that many college students sink in to (leaving apartment doors unlocked, like she did and many other do), and that this could happen to anyone. Yeardley was a girl, who went to my college, who lived very close to where I lived two of my four years at U.Va., and frankly seemed very similar to me. She was from Maryland, loved lacrosse (and I'm sure, the Orioles, Old Bay, and steamed crabs), and just looked from her pictures like we would have been good friends. My thoughts were repeated when I went to my parents' house the day after I found out about this crime. The story was on the cover of The Baltimore Sun, and as soon as I saw my dad he commented that the pictures of her and her friends look exactly like similar ones I have of me and my friends - on the beach, on the Lawn for a football tailgate, at a lacrosse game. Whenever horrific crimes hit close to home, the seriousness of them is just magnified a million times.

My second struggle, once the shock and horror of the crime started to sink in, was the backlash that would inevitably hit not only the sport of lacrosse, but also more specifically, the men's lacrosse team at U.Va. George Huguely obviously had problems - serious, awful, uncontrollable problems that should have been stopped and probably could have in retrospect. However, anyone who thinks about this situation rationally can realize that it is an isolated incident, and cannot be applied to every men's athlete or lacrosse player. People magazine did just the opposite of this last week, by completely insulting the lacrosse culture and the men's lacrosse team at U.Va.

In Maryland, lacrosse is not just another sport - it is an integral part of the culture. It goes hand and hand with beautiful sunsets, seafood, and the Chesapeake Bay. Meeting a fellow Marylander who plays lacrosse in college isn't like meeting someone else who happens to play soccer or baseball - it's meeting someone who most likely has grown up watching Cal Ripken and Brady Anderson hit home runs for Johnny Oates and who remembers Annapolis before the Annapolis Mall was built. It's a common bond that extends (most of the time, because the heartbeat of lacrosse is centered in Maryland) beyond just a sport. This description hopefully can explain the tight-knit lacrosse community in the college sports teams. They are kids, just like every student, who have left home and band together with people who they have a lot in common with, to help adjust. Yes, many of the top lacrosse programs in the nation are private schools with high tuitions. But other top schools are also Catholic and public schools. While many of the kids may have a privileged background, I wouldn't say that's a generalization you can apply to every player. Most of them in my experience come from upper middle class families, and most of them do not have a roman numeral of V or greater after their name.

Now, finally, to the real point of my post. Some of you may know that for a season and a half at UVa I was the manager of the mens' lacrosse team. I started spring of my freshman year and worked day in day out with those 40 boys, Coach Starsia, and Coach Van Arsdale for the 2004 season (including spending spring break in Cville), 2004 summer camp season, and 2004 fall ball. I went to every practice, traveled on buses and planes with them, ate meals with them, was happy after wins and was sad after losses with them. This time together resulted in an incredibly strong bond. We hung out on weekends and after games, sat together in classes, and in the midst of it all, I became a second sister to them and they became brothers to me. Never once did any of them treat me with anything less than respect; in fact, when I started dating "a guy from Navy" many of them made a point of meeting Greg to make sure he was up to par. These boys were and are wonderful. Sophomore year on my 19th birthday my roommates called them up, asking them to come surprise me. And they came. The night before my wedding one of them went and got me a hairbrush when I had left mine at home. I only keep in touch with a handful of them as we have all spread out, but just a short time with them left an indelible mark on my time at U.Va. This was so much more than giving out Gatorade and balls. Side note: Coach Starsia and Van Arsdale are the kindest, wisest coaches you will ever meet. They are revered in the sport of lacrosse, because they have more integrity than any coaches I have ever met. Everybody - without exception - on that team respects them and strives for their approval.

A few pics from my experience: 

I hope my single story of my experience with the U.Va. lacrosse family (I also became good friends with many of the girls, and they are classy, smart, funny, and wonderful too) can provide another perspective. Yeardley's death is horrifying, and what George Huguely did is frightening. How can a boy with such a background do something like this? I can't imagine (I never knew George, by the way - he was a freshman my senior year). But while I'm trying to make sense of this all, I do know that the issues at hand here can't be applied just to the women's or men's lacrosse teams at U.Va. - and those two wonderful teams don't deserve to be picked apart due to one isolated incident. Instead, safety and awareness needs to be taught to all students, regardless of whether they are on a team or play lacrosse.