‘It’s our reality’: The trauma felt by the Delaware State women’s lacrosse team stirs up a desire for change

Shocked, but not surprised. That was the sentiment for the Delaware State women’s lacrosse team as sheriff’s deputies in Georgia pulled over the team’s chartered bus and said they were going to search through their belongings.

An incident that occurred on April 20 went viral after sophomore defender Sydney Anderson wrote an article for her school newspaper. She expressed how the team endured “underlying racism” as deputies conducted the cargo search while the team was traveling back to Delaware after a lacrosse road trip.

She began the article by writing, “Breathe, but not too heavy. Look, but do not appear guilty. Speak, but never answer back. These are the constant reminders of being Black in America.”

Delaware State filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division on Wednesday asking it to further investigate the deputies who the school believes conducted an illegal search without cause. According to the complaint, the deputies told the driver of the bus and athletes that it was their job to search it.

Three Delaware State women’s lacrosse players who spoke with The Inquirer referred to George Floyd, Elijah McClain, and Breonna Taylor in explaining that while they had never previously experienced racial profiling by law enforcement, fatal police-involved incidents for Black Americans led them to silence themselves while on the bus. They feared that a reaction might lead to handcuffs or worse.

“To be Black in America means walking around with a chip on your shoulder,” Anderson said. “Every move you make has to be planned in advance, and you have to be extra cautious because you never know the outcome of a given situation.”

Along with fear, the team experienced frustration and defeat. And Jazmine Smith, the founder of a youth lacrosse program called Eyekonz based out of Philadelphia, said she was sick to her stomach after receiving a call from one of her former players — now at Delaware State — about what happened.

While comforting sophomore attacker Dorian Coehins on the phone, Smith said the racial incidents are not isolated to the lacrosse community, and reminded her and her teammates that they belong in this sport. According to NCAA demographics for 2021, 84% of women’s lacrosse athletes are white while 3% are Black. Smith, the diversity chair on the board of directors for the Philadelphia-area chapter of USA Lacrosse, said she has seen multiple incidents that haven’t been publicized.

And just in February, the Howard women’s lacrosse team, the only other Division I women’s program at a historically Black college, was called derogatory words and experienced racist remarks from students as it entered Presbyterian College’s stadium in South Carolina. Presbyterian expelled four students and punished others.

“It’s a numbing factor because it’s our reality,” Smith said. “Our reality is that when you play a non-traditional sport, you are going to get called the N-word, you are going to be harassed. Various things are going to occur that would not occur to someone that is Caucasian or of another race within the sport. The numbing factor then takes away from the reality, so you bypass it. It’s not the norm that’s being changed, but this is the reason ‌so many things have occurred.”

After being defeated by Stetson University, Delaware State wrapped up its season in DeLand, Fla. Feeling tired from its five-day trip, the team got comfortable on the chartered bus to head back home. Some watched a movie, worked on homework, or snuggled up to take naps.

Flashing lights and sirens took them away from their comfort zone. They were being pulled over on Georgia’s Interstate 95. The Liberty County deputies approached the bus driver, Tim Jones, who is Black, and said he was stopped for driving in the left lane.

After what felt like a moment of understanding, the mood suddenly shifted as more deputies arrived and at least two white deputies boarded the bus. One requested that players inform them if there were drugs on board — a statement that was “ominous,” Delaware State president Tony Allen wrote Wednesday in the school’s civil rights complaint. He added that the deputy “then went on to make every attempt to elicit incriminating statements from them.” Team members captured video and photos of the deputies coming onto the bus and a drug-sniffing dog circling their bags.

“The confusion definitely melted into shock,” Coehins said. “Especially when they brought out the dog, and they told us they were going to search our bags, I felt violated. It felt very violating to see people’s stuff be searched through and dug through like that.”

Delaware State is one of five HBCU lacrosse programs. With 70% of the team being Black, it didn’t take long for them to realize what was happening. While the deputies were “attempting to intimidate our student-athletes into confessing to possession of drugs,” Allen wrote, they ultimately found nothing and gave Jones a traffic warning.

After the team returned to Delaware, players spoke with head coach Pamella Jenkins about the incident and the importance of recognizing they did nothing wrong. Jenkins is still unclear why a search was justified in the first place but felt in the moment, she had no power to say otherwise.

“It’s traumatic in the sense that it made all of us feel very vulnerable,” Coehins said. “We were talking to the bus driver, and he said something that stuck with me, ‘seeing them look through all your personal belongings, it felt like they were looking at me and I had no clothes on.’ ”

Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman, who is Black, claimed at a news conference that the bus was stopped after the driver committed a lane violation. He denied claims that members of his department racially profiled the team when its bus was stopped and bags were searched, noting that due to the tinted windows on the bus, deputies were unaware of the race of the passengers when it was stopped. While Bowman claims the K-9 that was already on site due to an existing detail search and that the dog provided an alert that prompted the search.

Allen questioned that the driver had committed a violation and that the dog alerted a handler. He also met with team members and said the university won’t stop fighting until they get the justice they deserve. The support of the university overwhelmed the players. At graduation, each senior was given a pin that read, “We Stand With Delaware State University’s Women’s Lacrosse Team.”

“In times of crisis, you really ‌peel back the layers of who each person individually is,” Coehins said. “How they react and being able to come together in a time of crisis has really brought the team closer together.”

The situations at Howard and Delaware State reminded Smith of her run-ins with community members, who she said racially profiled her team with biased officiating while she was coaching.

It also brought back a moment from her middle school days in the late 1980s, when she was the only Black girls’ lacrosse player at Radnor Middle School. For the first time in her life, she experienced being called racial slurs at an away game.

“It was terrifying,” Smith said. “My grandparents weren’t there, and my coach didn’t know what to do but just to hold me. I remember coming home and crying. My grandfather did what he always does. He says, ‘What’s your affirmation?’ And I told him, and he said, ‘It’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to.’”

Smith realized if she hadn’t had the support and voice of her grandparents, she would still have rage. In part to Eyekonz offering an opportunity to diversify lacrosse, Smith also tries to teach players values of life that are bigger than the game.

Last year, she was preparing her players for the winter season. At the time, Smith had a deal with a manager at a Bala Cynwyd gym to use the facilities and train. When a new woman started working at the facility, Smith felt she was dismissive toward the players and herself.

“One Saturday practice, the girls came in, she’s like, ‘there’re no sticks permitted,’ ” Smith said. “Now, mind you, there’s a whole baseball team that trains at the facility, there’s tennis courts and she’s like, ‘you can’t be here.’ We told the girls, and it devastated them. I think it was the first time that aside from our girls having racism, like from referees or name calling, that was bluntly someone that was attacking them and making them feel like they did something when they did nothing.”

So where do we go from here? Smith and Harry Stinson, athletic director of Lincoln University, an HBCU, believe in voicing concerns, and then educating and using the resources of politicians and governing bodies to push for further change — whether that’s in the police system or within the NCAA.

“It’s mandating the safety for these kids that are traveling,” Smith said. “It’s not just from the collegiate level. I mean, it’s the fear factor at the youth level. You got to make sure that these kids that are being transported from home to whatever areas in the country are safe. That really starts at the top, it’s really an executive level thing that I think needs to happen.”