It seems today that all lacrosse players are negatively stereotyped just because of the sport they play and not who they actually are. People picture affluent, white New England prep school males who thoroughly enjoy drinking and other substances, and they assume we are all the same. Wrong. It started with the Duke University lacrosse scandal, then with the incident at University of Virginia, and now it has evolved into this social stigma that either leaves you scrutinized in the lacrosse community or on the outside to judge. We're not all bad people, we just happen to like the sport of lacrosse.
The modern view of lacrosse players started in Durham, North Carolina, in March of 2006. The Duke lacrosse team, one of the NCAA Division I power-houses, came under attack following accusations that three team members raped a North Carolina Central University student, who worked as a stripper, at a party one weekend. As a result of the accusations, Duke's head coach, Mike Pressler, was forced to resign and the remainder of Duke's season was cancelled.
During the investigation, the NCCU student was asked to identify the defendants from a select group of individuals –– all the Duke lacrosse players. This was a mistrial in the sense that it forced the NCCU student to believe that the defendants were in this group and that she had to pick the players from this select group, even if she didn't see them. More than a year later, the charges were dropped due to a rogue prosecutor, Mike Nifong, who was disbarred for "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." Although the charges were dropped, the reputation still stands.
A few years later in Charlottesville, Virginia, lacrosse was once again shown in bad light. Both student-athletes on their respective lacrosse teams at the University of Virginia, Yeardly Love and George Huegley found themselves in a deteriorating relationship, one that resulted in the murder of Yeardly. As a result, George Huegley was tried and charged with first degree murder and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Now, I am not defending Huegley whatsoever; he killed an innocent women and deserves to spend his life in jail, but what I am defending is the fact that he was a lacrosse player. He is one of many, many thousands of lacrosse players in the world and he made a terrible, unforgivable decision, but that does not mean that the modern day lacrosse player should have an asterisks by his name because of these past two incidents. When you look at other sports, I feel that a similar stigma does not exist like it does with lacrosse. For example, last year when Ray Rice, the running back for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens, was caught on video beating his wife in the elevator, it all fell on Ray Rice, a professional and role model (rightfully so), but there doesn't seem to be a stigma of assault surrounding football players - at least not one I can see. Now why is that?
These two aforementioned cases are outliers that have resulted in a negative stigma that now seems to label all players of the game. As a college lacrosse player, I have experienced this stereotyping first hand. People have brought up the Duke rape scandal, people have brought up the UVA murder case and people have made assumptions about me because I play lacrosse ranging from partying habits to academics. This is all wrong. Athletes should not be judged by their sport because of past unrelated events or because of stereotypes––- I'm not a New England prep school kid and nor are most of my teammates. We simply play lacrosse because we love the sport, not because we want to be a part of some negative social culture constructed by those on the outside.
