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FROM THE EDITOR
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Unwanted Spotlight
Lax bros, play-hard-party-hard culture undermine our sport
upset Salisbury in 2010 to win the NCAA Division III championship, The Boston Globe did a 162-word blurb in its college roundup. But when 27 members
W
of the Tufts men’s lacrosse team received two-game suspensions in January due to boorish behavior at a women’s volleyball match, Globe columnist Kevin Paul DuPont issued a 1,052-word diatribe on the “devilish cocktail of alcohol and ignorance topped off with a couple of bitter olives of painful, public sexual harassment and racism.” That’s the nature of media. If it bleeds, it leads. And Tufts bled profusely.
Some people still don’t realize your accountability as a college student changes
PUBLICATION
Managing Director of Communications Bill Rubacky Director of Communications Brian Logue Editor Matt DaSilva ( @mdasilva15) Assistant Editors Clare Lochary (
, Corey McLaughlin ( ,
Matt Forman ( Art Director Gabriella Ferraro O’Brien Graphic Design Manager Heather Wallace
Staff Writers TJ Buchanan, Lucia Clark, Jac Coyne, Lane Errington, Emily Gibson, Paul Krome, Charlie Obermayer, Paul Ohanian, Bill Tanton
Advertising Sales Associate Dana Verona Chief Photographer Kevin P. Tucker Staff Photographer John Strohsacker
LaxMagazine.com Editor Corey McLaughlin
LaxMagazine.com Asst. Editor Jac Coyne (
4 LACROSSE MAGAZINE March 2013 >>
when you’re an athlete — especially if you’re a lacrosse player. For the image of the sport, does it get any worse than this? Well, it does. And it did. Seven years ago. That’s why it didn’t take long for those three dreaded words — Duke lacrosse case — to get dragged into this conversation. The sport then was as much in the crosshairs as the three men falsely accused of rape. They were exonerated. Lacrosse? Not so much. Think about the reports you see on ESPN when a college
hen the Tufts men’s lacrosse team
football or basketball player gets into trouble. You’ll hear about how it will affect that team’s performance or his draft position. Do they use it as a scaffold to deride the sports off which they make millions? Of course not. Bring lacrosse into the spotlight, however, and we hear about a culture of privilege and partying, rich
Accountability as a college student changes when you’re an athlete — especially if you’re a
lacrosse player.
kids with a misguided sense of self worth. It’s seldom a good thing when the sport stumbles into places like Deadspin or Boston’s Bar Stool Sports. They love to rip the lax bros. We don’t know fully what happened in the Cousens Gymnasium on the Tufts campus Sept. 21. We have the words of a guest op-ed columnist in the student newspaper, The Tufts Daily. And they were pretty damning — guys in lacrosse apparel shouting at players about their childbearing hips and getting them deported.
A subsequent investigation confirmed the players engaged in “unacceptable behavior.” Unsurprisingly, alcohol was
involved. According to a 2012 NCAA survey of athletes representing 23 sports, men’s lacrosse ranked second only to ice hockey in alcohol use and first — by a wide margin — in social drug use. John M. Yeager, author of “Our Game: The Character and Culture of Lacrosse,” is the director of the Center for Character Excellence at The Culver Academies in Indiana. He played and coached at the college, club and pro levels. “It’s unfortunate, but the pairing of drinking and men’s lacrosse is still prevalent in many programs that live the cliché of ‘play hard and party hard,’” Yeager wrote in an April 2006 article for
SI.com. But to blame alcohol alone would be foolish. And to say it’s up to the parents alone would be sheepish. Youth coaches are positioned to exert
tremendous influence on the next generation of players. That’s why US Lacrosse has partnered with the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) for the last decade — to further its message about teaching life lessons through our sport. Consider these words from Peter Dante, whom you might know as an actor in several hilarious Adam Sandler films. A former player, he remains active with Adrenaline Lacrosse and LXM Pro Tour. “The whole lax bro thing where guys are too cool, and not nice to people, and don’t represent the game well — we’re trying to eliminate that mentality,” Dante says in this month’s “Lifestyles” interview (page 22). “We want the kid who picks up his skateboard with his lacrosse stick and will help the old lady across the street instead of laughing at her.” LM
— Matt DaSilva
mdasilva@uslacrosse.org A Publication of US Lacrosse
©JOHN STROHSACKER
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