Seven years ago, Lloyd Carter was sitting in his office at the Baltimore City Fire Department when he received a phone call from an unknown number. Carter, in uniform, reached for his phone, picked it up and sat back in his chair. The deputy chief had no idea his life was about to change.

On the other end was Verina Crawford, a woman from Brooklyn. She and Carter had never met or spoken before, but it didn’t matter. Crawford told Carter about her 21-year old son, Michael, who, a couple of weeks prior, passed away after suddenly going into cardiac arrest due to an enlarged heart.

At the time, Michael was a senior at Hampton University, and was working with his mother during winter break to write a proposal to his school’s athletic department to introduce a club lacrosse program. Crawford contacted Carter, a former lacrosse standout at Morgan State and then-coach at Northwestern High School in Baltimore, to help create and head the program.

Seven years later, Carter is at the helm of Hampton lacrosse, where he became the inaugural head coach in 2016. Hampton is the only one of 101 historically black colleges and universities with a men’s lacrosse program. The Pirates, in their third season, are laying the groundwork for a future of diversity in lacrosse. The lacrosse program at HU stemmed from Michael Crawford, who envisioned a program that changed the lives of everybody connected to Hampton lacrosse but never got to play for the Pirates himself.

Carter was first exposed to lacrosse in 1967, when he was eight. His 17-year old brother played the sport at Edmondson-Westside (Maryland) High in Baltimore and, after seeing him play, Carter took up practicing in his backyard and basement. Throughout middle school and into high school, his primary sport was football, but after his coach suggested he try out for the lacrosse team, his priorities changed.

“I started playing (lacrosse) and I was just natural at it, because I had developed decent stick work,” Carter said. “My best friends all played lacrosse. We built a bond together through lacrosse, and from there I really just fell in love with the game.”

Carter was recruited to play lacrosse at Morgan State, one of the top teams in Division II and the sole HBCU program in NCAA lacrosse at the time. Carter played his senior season in 1981. That was Morgan State’s last Division II season before the program was cut due to lack of funding.

Over the next two decades, the number of HBCU lacrosse programs never increased, and Carter saw several highly-skilled black players whose careers ended after high school. Upset with the lack of diversity in the sport, he founded Blax Lax Inc. in 2002, to “expose inner-city kids to better opportunities to continue to play at the college level.”

Carter advocated for the futures of black lacrosse players in more ways than one. From 1999 to 2013, he coached Northwestern High School — where the minority enrollment is 97 percent according to U.S. News and World Report — to two regional, two city and six divisional championships.

Carter also returned to Morgan State, where in 2005 he created and coached club lacrosse. After decades of low-level coaching in Baltimore, the first opportunity to seriously advance his career came while working at the fire department, when he received the call.

“(Mrs. Crawford) searched ‘black lacrosse coach’, and my name came up. That’s what made the famous phone call,” Carter said. “I asked her if she believed in God, and she said ‘yes’, and I said ‘God helped you call the right person’.”

During the phone call, Carter learned how Michael Crawford fell in love with lacrosse as a kid and played it until he came to Hampton, where not even a club program existed. He learned that before returning home for winter break his senior year, Michael Crawford started writing a pitch to Hampton Athletics for a club lacrosse program. He learned how after Michael Crawford’s shocking death, his mother’s drive to carry out his dream led her to Carter.

From 2012-16, Carter coached club lacrosse at HU. Each year, participation increased, along with the level of play. In 2016, Hampton President William Harvey and Athletic Director Eugene Marshall Jr. signed off on the club team’s transition into a Division I program.

“There was an interest in (Michael Crawford), who wanted to start this program,” Marshall said. “The kids really connected with Coach Carter, so he was chosen to be the head coach.”

In their inaugural campaign, the Pirates lost all five of their games, followed by a one-win year. Now, Hampton has two wins in its first six games of the 2018 season. HU is forced to piece together its full schedule because it doesn’t belong to a conference. As the program expands and becomes more competitive in the coming years, the Pirates will look to join a conference, Marshall said.

Despite the lack of on-field success in its brief history, Hampton’s players cherish their opportunity to play the sport they love at an HBCU. Such an opportunity is rare, freshman Pierce Johnson said, which has only heightened the sense of pride he and his teammates feel when they put on the uniform. Above all, the program remembers Michael Crawford, who imagined a future that the Pirates are living out in his memory.

“I always thought I was getting the best of both worlds, I could play lacrosse and go to an HBCU at the same time,” Johnson said. “To play for a program with such a great motivation behind it is special.”

Published on March 27, 2018 at 8:42 pm

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