{"id":144,"featured":1,"modified":"2026-07-15 23:25:44","latitude":30.634552827371340555373535607941448688507080078125,"longitude":-97.668654918736820036428980529308319091796875,"title":"A Brief History of Lacrosse at Southwestern","subtitle":"How the story of Southwestern Lacrosse is intertwined with the story of Southwestern’s drive to be a national liberal arts college","fullsize":"https://placingmemory.southwestern.edu/files/fullsize/0e5f6c8e3064bf9adcde54947338a1ca.jpg","address":"","all_locations":[],"zoom":16,"creator":["Sydney Martin ‘27"],"description":"The Southwestern Lacrosse team was the first in Texas to become an official NCAA team and as of today, Southwestern has the only NCAA-affiliated varsity team in Texas for both men’s and women’s lacrosse.
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\r\nAt a school that has played such an integral role in the expansion of lacrosse in Texas and the American South and Southwest, you would think that this would be something everyone knows, but there seems to be a general lack of knowledge about how the team began and just how far it has come since its inaugural season. Additionally, it is important to look at this history to have a better understanding of how having a lacrosse team relates to Southwestern’s identity as a national liberal arts university.
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\r\nThe story of SU Lacrosse begins in the 1983-84 school year when the team first came together as a club. The club met at different times throughout the week for practices. The twenty-four person roster was recognized in the 1984 yearbook, but the team had yet to gain much traction across campus. The first couple of seasons were difficult and the charter members had a hard time putting together a team that remained consistent due to injuries, illness, and other priorities.
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\r\nIt wasn’t until the third season that the team was able to pull off a win. Finally in the 1988 season, the team experienced their first winning season with a record of 7-6. This was a huge milestone for the club and it provided hope to team members at the time that the future of the program could be a lasting one.
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\r\nThrough documentation in yearbooks and The Megaphone, we see the progression of the team throughout these first couple of years. Then, in 1989, we are given the story of an incredible season where the club lost only one game and won the league championship versus The University of Texas. Part of the reason the team was so successful this semester is because of the support from the Southwestern community who would consistently show up for the members of the team.
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\r\nFollowing the monumental season for the 1989 lacrosse team, there are a few years worth of coverage in The Megaphone about notable games and/or players, but as the years go on the information seems to dwindle.
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\r\nA common problem that the team seemed to have until about 2000 was a lack of players. Additionally, the team struggled for a few years starting in 1995 because their original coach, Monty Curtis, left and finding a replacement proved to be a difficult feat. This had a huge impact on how well the team was able to do and whether or not they could even play in certain games. Throughout this time, though, the Southwestern community continued to support the team and encouraged them to continue fighting to keep the team alive.
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\r\nDespite their hardships, they continued on and started picking up more players. Lacrosse eventually started to gain more interest on campus, and in the 2001 yearbook the creation of a women’s club team is documented. Up to that point, women who wanted to play lacrosse had played on the men’s team.
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\r\nThere are a few articles over the next six years that mention men’s and women’s lacrosse club teams and how both teams continue to grow and improve. After 2007 though, there is little to no documentation of the lacrosse teams on campus until they’re made NCAA sports in 2010 (men’s) and 2013 (women’s).
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\r\nThe current men’s lacrosse coach, Bill Bowman, is entering his 28th season as a coach, with 12 of those seasons being during the club days of the sport. That means that he has experienced the years that we have little documentation about. Bowman was also involved with the team during his time as a student at Southwestern and played in the 1989 and 1990 seasons.
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\r\nWhen I sat down to talk with Coach Bowman, he stated that he had never played lacrosse before he came to Southwestern, but once he joined the team, he immediately fell in love with the sport. I also learned from Bowman that the team has a rich history, much of which he would document through writing and online documentation. However, all of this documentation seems to have disappeared despite his efforts to keep the history of the program alive.
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\r\nBowman said that years worth of game scores, player statistics, team statistics, and other little facts were digitized and that the digitized file is gone. This means that much of the history of lacrosse before 2010 relies on the people who were a part of the history to tell the stories. So, that is what Bowman did for me, and now I can now share it with you.
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\r\nIn 2000, the club team consisted of both men and women, but with a growing number of women interested in the sport, they wanted to start their own team. One of these women in particular was so excited to start that when she went to the league meeting to get more information, she signed Southwestern up to compete with a women’s team (despite not having a coach or enough players for a team).
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\r\nSo starting in 2001, the women began practicing and Bowman would conduct the practices for the men and women at the same time. The following year, the women would play their first game against Trinity University in San Antonio, which they won 6-5. They would only play four games for the season but they proved themselves as a force to be reckoned with.
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\r\nThe main problem that arose for the women’s team was that they could not hold the numbers that they needed to field a team, much like the men when they first started. The men’s team, on the other hand, was thriving under the guidance of Coach Bowman. They were climbing up the ranks, getting as high as #9 in the entire nation in their final season as a club.
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\r\nThe women would go on to get a coach and win many more games before also converting to an NCAA sport in the 2013-14 school year. This was the same year that the football program was reinstated so adding the women’s lacrosse team was a way for the school to stay within the requirements of Title IX. This law requires the university to provide equitable opportunities for men and women to participate in sports on campus. By adding the women’s team the university could stay within these requirements while simultaneously expanding opportunities for participation in lacrosse in the South.
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\r\nBoth club teams were extremely successful, sending many players to All-American games and racking up recognitions for All–Conference selections. And with the start of their NCAA DIII status, the sports began documenting their games and important season information on the Southwestern Pirates website where that history still lives today.
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\r\nSo, what difference does it make whether or not we know this information? For many of the people that were a part of the team in the past as well as those that still play today, lacrosse is a huge part of their lives. They have poured their hearts into the team and made an effort to leave a lasting impression that paved the way for what the team is able to become today.
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\r\nBecause of the determination of many of these athletes to keep the program going through hardships, Southwestern is able to continue making an outsized impact and making memories in the lacrosse world.
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\r\nWhile the campus takes time to try and remember its history through buildings, names, stories and much more, we should also remember that specific athletic communities leave just as much of a lasting mark on campus life. The experiences shared by members of the lacrosse team deserve recognition because they represent decades of dedication, friendship, and the continuing evolution of Southwestern University.
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\r\nFurthermore, looking at the history of lacrosse prompts us to question what it is about the school’s identity that allows a sport popular for decades in midwestern and East Coast states to thrive here in Texas, despite a lack of exposure to the sport in most Texas high schools. More specifically: what accounts for the success of lacrosse at Southwestern when other Texas schools with more resources and students, such as Rice, The University of Texas (UT), and Texas A&M, are not able to support varsity NCAA lacrosse programs for either gender, much less both?
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\r\nResearching the history of the lacrosse programs at Southwestern has made me wonder if it is related to President Roy B. Shilling Jr.’s goal of “National Maturity” in the early 1980s, the exact moment that the story of lacrosse became intertwined with the story of Southwestern.
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\r\nShilling’s goal for Southwestern in the 1980s was to create a distinctive liberal arts institutional identity for the school that positioned Southwestern as a national liberal arts college instead of a Texas-focused, Methodist liberal arts college, which had been its identity for years.
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\r\nEspecially in the “preppy” 1980s, that meant projecting an image of Southwestern that resonated with the public image of East Coast liberal arts colleges, and their ties to East Coast college prep schools. And although lacrosse had origins in Native American culture and has since grown more inclusive nationally as well as at Southwestern, in the early 1980s, lacrosse was thoroughly associated with the culture of East Coast elite private prep schools and colleges that provided the model for Southwestern’s aspirations toward National Maturity.
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\r\nEither way, though there have been some struggles since becoming a DIII program for both the men and women, the teams have become a part of the identity of Southwestern, even as that identity itself continues to evolve. Ultimately, this intertwining of lacrosse and Southwestern’s identity is what allows the team to persevere through hardships and what sets them apart from other programs.
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