Jen Adams won the inaugural award in 2001 and later
stashed fellow Aussie Hannah Nielsen’s trophy in her Baltimore basement.
Katie Chrest’s Tewaaraton made a cameo in her wedding preprations.
Most winners tend to send their trophies to the most secure location they can think of — the place that kept them safe until they became lacrosse legends. Their parents’ house. Besides, parents have certain innate skills that some college lacrosse players have yet to develop.
On the day after the 2011 ceremony,
Virginia’s Steele Stanwick noticed the base of his trophy was a little wobbly. His dad took a wrench to it and fixed that right up. The trophy ended up on display at their house in Baltimore. Stanwick’s buddies couldn’t resist taking photos of it when they stopped by during college. While the trophies typically don’t go out in public, they’re not exactly hidden. An award like this deserves a place of prominence. Many Tewaaraton trophies reside on the family’s mantle. Getting back to the safety of a player’s parents’ house can be trouble if those parents happen to live a little further than Long Island or Baltimore. Take Northwestern’s Hannah Nielsen, whose parents live in Australia.
WHAT IS IT?
The Tewaaraton Trophy is a bronze sculpture of a Mohawk native playing lacrosse. It was designed and created by Frederick Kail with the assistance of Thomas Vennum, Jr., a renowned Native American lacrosse historian and author, who consulted with Kail to ensure the trophy’s historical authenticity. The 12-inch figure is mounted on a hexagon-shaped slab of black granite and polished Cocobolo wood. The hexagonal base symbolizes the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy: the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes. With some minor decorative exceptions, the stick is a replica of a pre-1845 Cayuga stick belonging to the grandfather of Alexander T. General of the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. This stick was an original predecessor of the modern-day lacrosse stick.
Nielsen had her 2008 award packed by UPS and then flew to Melbourne, only to wait for a box that never came. Her other two bags arrived safely, so Nielsen hopped a flight home to Adelaide without the Tewaaraton, hoping the trophy would follow. “My mum was freaking out about it,” Nielsen said. “I kind of just thought it would eventually show up.” Four days later, there was a knock on their door. The baggage people had her trophy, still in perfect condition. It now sits proudly in her parents’ study. Even getting the Tewaaraton to Northwestern after the 2008 ceremony was a challenge. When Nielsen boarded a
34 LACROSSE MAGAZINE June 2014>>
flight from D.C. back to Chicago, she realized she had left the trophy at the airport’s Potbelly Sandwich Shop. After sprinting down the concourse, Nielsen retrieved the trophy and barely made it back in time for her flight. She asked the flight attendants to watch it while she slept. When Nielsen won her second award the following season, she kept it closer — in Adams’ Baltimore basement, alongside her countrywoman’s trophy until Nielsen moved out to Colorado, where she’s now an assistant coach. Maryland’s Katie Schwarzmann didn’t even have the opportunity to choose to send the Tewaaraton Award to her parents. Her dad stepped right in and took it home after the 2012 ceremony. He put it on the mantle, where it stayed alone until Schwarzmann won her second award in 2013. Now there are two trophies for visitors to see — or at least for her dad to look at every day. He was so proud, he hoisted the trophy overhead on stage for family photos. There’s another reason why the trophy does not get lugged around to every house party on every college campus in the lacrosse-playing world.
In addition to its intricate design, the trophy is really, really heavy. “It’s an honor to be the winner of the Tewaaraton Trophy,” said Rob Pannell, who brought the award back to Cornell in 2013. “But that thing is not easy to carry around everywhere.” A recurring theme among winners was how difficult it was to hold up the trophy for photos.
“By the end of all the pictures, the photographer had to tell me to hold it up straight because it got so heavy,” said Chrest Erbe, the former Duke standout who buckled her trophy into her car to get it home after she won it in 2005.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
©MARYLAND (JA); COURTESY OF KATIE CHREST ERBE
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