After over 1000years of lacrosse,Africa got a representative at the highly socially and communally marketable world lacrosse games that took place in Denver Colorado. Thousands of stories were written about Uganda as a country which appeared as an African sample at the games such as this by The Baltimore Sun.
Andrew Boston wore a headlamp
so he could walk to the bus stop at night. He carried a lacrosse stick
to ward off wild dogs, and then he waited for a bus that might not come.
For Uganda to be ready for its historic debut on the world stage, he knew he had to make this journey. Every weekend.
Hired as the head coach of the Ugandan national team in September, Boston, an
Ellicott City
native and Loyola High graduate, made the 20-hour round trip from the
radio station where he was working in the Teso region of the
northeastern part of the country to the capital city of Kampala. There,
he would work with the team.
"I realize how absolutely
ridiculous it sounds, but when you're there, it's just the way it is,"
Boston said. "There was nothing that was easy about this."
Boston's efforts have been rewarded with two wins — and heaps of
publicity — in the Federation of International Lacrosse World
Championships in Commerce City, Colo., a suburb of Denver.
Uganda, the first African nation to compete in the world
championships, took up the sport just a few years ago. And its ties to
the Baltimore area are strong.
Aside from Boston, who was a defenseman at the University of
Delaware, Tyler Steinhardt, who hails from Reisterstown and graduated
from Boys' Latin, is the team's general manager.
Steinhardt, 20, traveled to Uganda in June 2011 as part of the Fields
of Growth organization, which seeks to plant seeds for lacrosse in
developing countries. Steinhardt, who would make two more trips to
Uganda, was asked by Fields of Growth founder and Wheeling Jesuit head
coach Kevin Dugan to become the Ugandan team's general manager the
following year
"I'm not [Ravens GM] Ozzie Newsome yet, but I did pick the players, I
helped make cuts on the team, I was responsible for training, I helped
with some fundraising, little things like that," said Steinhardt, who in
2012 founded the Shootout for Soldiers, a 24-hour lacrosse game that
raised $120,000 to support wounded American troops. "It kind of got
bigger and bigger, and now we're here in Denver, which is pretty
incredible."
Boston had happily given up lacrosse after graduating from Delaware in 2003. He joined the
Peace Corps,
which had sent him to Haiti after an earthquake ravaged that country in
January 2010. Two years later, he was sent to Uganda, discovered Fields
of Growth via Facebook and sent the organization a message of his
desire to meet staff members and Ugandan players.
"I went down for a week, and that was my first experience back with
the game," Boston said of that meeting in December 2012. "Other than
coaching my future son or daughter, it was the perfect re-entry to the
game. I went back in the summer of 2013 and I wasn't a coach. I was
there to help out, and I was really getting into it, and then I realized
that I love this game."
A foreign game
In a country where soccer and rugby are the most popular sports,
helping the Ugandan players adjust to the intricacies of lacrosse was a
difficult assignment.
Steinhardt said some players put elbow pads on their knees, used
girls sticks and would occasionally try to head the ball into the net
like some of their soccer heroes. Boston said some viewed the sticks as
fishing poles.
But the players began to learn and adapt, and Boston and Steinhardt
even made cuts, narrowing the pool of 60 candidates to 25 — 18 of whom
made the trip to the world championships.
Along the way, players have endured stark hardships. Eight of the 18
players hail from the northern region of Uganda, which has been
terrorized by
Joseph Kony and his
Lord's Resistance Army.
Kony has kidnapped children and forcibly drafted them into his army,
and players have lost parents, siblings and other family members.
Some players have watched relatives die from HIV, and nearly all have battled poverty and hunger.
Even getting to the United States was a challenge. After a
fundraiser, the Dream 2014 Campaign, launched by former Louisville
lacrosse player Aimee Dixon raised about $150,000 to pay for travel
expenses for the team and coaching staff, Boston was unable to secure
his players' visas until days before the team was scheduled to fly to
Colorado. American and team officials had to hammer out security details
to prevent players from defecting.
"These men are from the villages," said Boston, who has been aided on
his staff by former Princeton All-America midfielder Tom Schreiber
(offensive coordinator) and Virginia rising junior defenseman Tanner
Scales (defensive coordinator). "It's not like we brought
college-educated, city-dwelling Ugandan men out there. Many of these
guys are marginally employed. Over half of them on their passport
applications wrote 'Sportsman' [as their occupations]."
Shaking up the world
