With our Varsity season starting essentially on Mother’s Day this year in 2021 (May 9th, an early reminder for all you High School and Youth players) and coming off black history month, I feel it completely appropriate to focus on a story that gives us a look at both aspects of our sport and the community we impact beyond the field.
Until this year, no historically black college since 1981 had fielded a men’s Division I lacrosse program. But then Hampton University student Michael Crawford and his mother Verina Mathis-Crawford came along.
“Words can become reality” in her own words video
Hampton’s lacrosse program was started in 2011 as a club team before it was moved up to varsity status in May 2015. It is the first Historically Black College or University to play men’s lacrosse since Morgan State University in 1981.
The push to make it a varsity sport was headed by Verina Crawford, whose son Michael played club lacrosse at Hampton before he died at the age of 21. After his death, Crawford made it her mission to get an NCAA-sanctioned program started at the school.
Michael had picked up lacrosse in high school after trying multiple sports and wanted to bring it to Hampton University. The idea was a long shot, especially as not even a club existed at the university. Michael started drafting his pitch to the Hampton Athletic Department for a club lacrosse program, while at home on winter break of his senior year.
“There’s some days that one never forgets,” Verina recalls. “It was Dec. 28, 2010. Michael did not come down for dinner, as I would usually call him. He and I were scheduled to watch a football game that evening. So I went up to Michael’s room, and Mike was, at that point, unresponsive.”
Michael had gone into sudden cardiac arrest. He was 21.
“I had to dig down real deep to understand: is there any work I could pick up that was unfinished business of Mike’s?” Verina says. “So I started making phone calls.” As the expression goes, the rest is history.
In their inaugural campaign, the Pirates lost all five of their games, followed by a one-win year. Now, Hampton has two wins in its first six games of the 2018 season. HU is forced to piece together its full schedule because it doesn’t belong to a conference. As the program expands and becomes more competitive in the coming years, the Pirates will look to join a conference, Marshall said.
Despite the lack of on-field success in its brief history, Hampton’s players cherish their opportunity to play the sport they love at an HBCU. Such an opportunity is rare, freshman Pierce Johnson said, which has only heightened the sense of pride he and his teammates feel when they put on the uniform. Above all, the program remembers Michael Crawford, who imagined a future that the Pirates are living out in his memory.
“I always thought I was getting the best of both worlds, I could play lacrosse and go to an HBCU at the same time,” Johnson said. “To play for a program with such a great motivation behind it is special.”
As club and program thank you, the parents and especially mom’s, that make our sport and the lives of our players possible. Whatever motivates you to bring your son or daughter to practice in Lynden on the amazing sun filled spring days with Mt Baker in the back ground, to the rainy windy days that remind us why we still need “grit” and character. We thank you. Help us continue to grow this program and our club not just for our players, but because of the lasting impact it has on our community even after they leave us to go on to college or bigger opportunities.
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