As winter slowly turns into spring, two HBCUs are getting ready for a historic assembly.
When the College of District Columbia visits Virginia State this Saturday for a doubleheader, it should mark the primary time in historical past that two Division II HBCUs will sq. off in males’s and ladies’s lacrosse.
Whereas UDC has had a longtime program for a number of years, this will likely be VSU’s first 12 months fielding a program.
Trojans males’s head coach Shaun Church and ladies’s head coach Ashley Lawrence have embraced the problem of constructing a program from the bottom up.
“I believe that’s probably the most rewarding piece. I could be right here for 10 or 30 years, however I like realizing I put this basis in place,” stated Lawrence, a four-year participant at Howard College who has coached at the highschool and school degree. “I like this house as a result of I’m not making an attempt to mildew from another person’s template.”
Church, a co-captain of Onondaga Group School’s 2009 nationwide championship crew and a Salisbury alum, defined the attraction to Virginia State.
“VSU had some nice issues … that was one thing that attracted me once I talked to Miss (Peggy) Davis (the varsity’s athletic director),” he stated. “Lacrosse is an educational sport, and VSU has nice engineering and agricultural packages. We’ve been capable of fill our recruiting class due to the funding the varsity gives in these areas.”
In the meantime, at UDC, girls’s head coach Zhane Ruffin and first-year males’s head coach Matthew Marrett are enthusiastic about new competitors down I-95.
“Once I began in 2018, there wasn’t numerous illustration, and the recruiting pool was smaller,” stated Ruffin, a former captain at Methodist College. “Attempting to navigate that was powerful. Then with COVID occurring and Black Lives Matter taking off a bit extra, folks needed to contemplate HBCUs, and that has grown our pool.”
Marrett, a UDC alum who begins his first season as head coach this spring, agrees with Ruffin’s sentiment.
“Once I look again at it as a student-athlete, the pool was a combination. We had been considered as an HBCU, however we had been competing with PWIs,” he says.
Each colleges’ coaches agree that illustration is only one piece of the puzzle to assist lacrosse turn into a sport that HBCUs can get behind.
“You see these packages and people, totally different items that wish to discuss variety in sports activities, properly, the HBCUs are the variety,” Lawrence stated. “We have now to place our greatest foot ahead. All of us must discover a strategy to work collectively. That is one house the place we will work collectively in the direction of a standard purpose, push the envelope.”
Stated Church: “Once I began teaching, I noticed the shortage of illustration, and the grew to become a staple of one thing I needed to do. To enhance Black illustration in lacrosse was my purpose. That grew to become the plan.”
Virginia State and UDC will make historical past on Saturday, and the coaches are excited to face one another and set their targets for the spring.
“We’re excited for the expansion of our program. The brotherhood that they’ve purchased on this 12 months has proven greater than in earlier years,” Matthew Marrett stated.
