Hope rarely arrives neatly packaged. On the morning of Feb. 13, it appeared as the Hampton Pirates lacrosse team, a motley crew of misfits, cast-offs and neophytes. But when they took the field against the Roberts Wesleyan Redhawks, Hampton became the first historically black college to field a Division I lacrosse team in more than 30 years.
Hampton had zero recruits. It was a team of part-time players and kids who didn’t have much business playing on a D-1 level, a modern-day version of Cool Runnings.
Roberts Wesleyan beat Hampton 20-3, but the score was irrelevant. SportsCenter wasn’t going live for the pregame because it expected a nail-biter. Lacrosse Magazine didn’t put the Pirates on its cover because it was an elite program. This was about optics and otherness.
In 2016, an athletic team composed entirely of African-Americans rarely generates more than a shrug. Precedents in other sports have long been set. But for lacrosse, the scene at Hampton was jarring. This team had a black coach and a black marching band playing in the stands while black fans roared through the biting winter cold. In lacrosse, this was almost unprecedented.
Drew Jenkins grew up in affluent Montclair, New Jersey. Jenkins dreamed of playing for Syracuse, but not because he grew up watching quarterback Donovan McNabb or wanted to follow in New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony’s footsteps. Jenkins wanted to play lacrosse for the Orange, a program as successful as Kentucky Wildcats basketball or Ohio State football. It is the alma mater of Jim Brown. Yes, that Jim Brown — perhaps the greatest running back of all time and widely considered the greatest player to pick up a lacrosse stick.
Jenkins’ dream came true in 2011 when he suited up for Syracuse as a freshman. But looking back, he now calls much of his four years at Syracuse a “nightmare.”
“In practice I’d sometimes just literally sit by myself or go into drills by myself and not really talk to anybody,” said Jenkins. “Those days sucked, to be quite honest.”
