ON A 2016 FIELD TRIP TO BROWN UNIVERSITY, a middle school-aged Hakim Hicks picked up a routine ground ball from the turf of Stevenson-Pincince Field. From behind him, he heard a voice.

“Keep doing that,” a man said. “One day you’ll be here.”

Hicks looked up and was face to face with Dylan Molloy, an attackman at Brown and the Tewaaraton Award winner that year.

Molloy’s words of encouragement were a rare experience for Hicks, not because he lacked talent, but because he lacked role models.

Hicks, who is Black, struggled to find lacrosse players who looked like him growing up. He still does. Of the 15,138 men’s lacrosse players across all NCAA divisions in 2021, only 584 were Black — less than 4 percent — according to a survey conducted by the NCAA.

Young lacrosse players from the youth level through college are leading a charge in activism within the sport, with older players acting as role models for the next generation, building community and creating space for Black voices in lacrosse simply by being visible.

Now a midfielder at Johns Hopkins, Hicks gets Instagram direct messages almost daily from young Black lacrosse players across the country asking him for advice. And Hicks is happy to oblige.

“Just the other day, I got one from a little kid from Florida, and he was asking me how to deal with racism as a young, Black lacrosse player, because we just don’t have that much support in the sport,” Hicks said. “And it kind of choked me up, because when I was younger, I remember that’s something that I struggled with.”

Hicks was one of the inaugural members of the P.S. 76 chapter of Harlem Lacrosse in New York, a school-based nonprofit that provides support both on and off the field. Players like Molloy would frequently visit Hicks and his classmates in school to talk about what it took to be a Division I lacrosse player.

“It kind of seemed unbelievable at that point because they didn’t really come from a program like we came from,” Hicks said. “They didn’t come from the circumstances. They weren’t coming from the inner city, where lacrosse just isn’t one of the things that people care about.”

But at Johns Hopkins, one of the preeminent college lacrosse programs in the country, Hicks and his teammates can share those same sentiments with young players from a place of empathy.

“To be able to go and tell them now that I’m just like them and I really came from kind of the same shoes that they were walking in means everything,” Hicks said.

ATHLETE ACTIVISM ISN’T NEW. From Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics to Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem during NFL games in 2016, Black athletes have driven social change in sports.

“There have always been these courageous athletes who have stepped up to use their voice not knowing what was going to happen to them,” said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

But athletes without millions of Twitter followers or who aren’t regularly on national TV have just as much of a place in activism, even if what they do isn’t as visible. As is the case with Hicks, much of that activism comes in the form of being role models.

Solace Porter, a Black lacrosse player at Division III Oberlin College in Ohio, spent the winter term of her freshman year creating an outreach lacrosse program in Barbados, where her father was born.

“I taught girls ages 5 to 10 lacrosse and leadership skills, so that’s been my main way that I’ve spread my love for lacrosse while also advocating for diversity,” Porter said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OBERLIN ATHLETICS

The reason that so much of the advocacy for diversity in lacrosse is coming from the players is because of the need for Black role models in a sport that is largely white.

“In activism around certain causes, people have to see people that look like them,” Lebowitz said.

But as much as athletes can drive change and inclusion on an interpersonal level, many lacrosse players see a need for institutional changes.

“How our society works with hierarchies, it’s usually best when [change] comes from the top down,” Porter said. “People like me and other athletes are definitely advocating for this, but it’s been a slow progression, and I think that’s because it’s not coming from those people who have positions of power.”

MOST LACROSSE COACHES IN THE NCAA ARE WHITE. Out of 915 head coaches across all three NCAA divisions, 26 men’s and 18 women’s head coaches last year were Black, according to the NCAA. Just 129 out of 1,106 NCAA athletic directors were Black.

Despite such lopsided demographics, many teams, including those at Johns Hopkins and Oberlin, have been planning and conducting diversity, equity and inclusion workshops to educate the largely white lacrosse community, which Porter called the first step to creating institutional change.

“Our main goal right now is to get everyone involved and aware of microaggressions and things like that,” Porter said. “The most important thing is just to educate everyone so everyone’s informed, because the biggest downfall is assumptions and things like that from just not being well informed.”

When the Johns Hopkins men faced Maryland last year, players and coaches wore shirts that read “Black Lives Matter.” The game was broadcast on ESPN, and thousands of people watching saw the Blue Jays’ support for the movement.

“But the even bigger thing was that before, we sat down as a team and just talked about it,” said Cody Ince, a current sophomore midfielder for the Blue Jays. “Having that conversation with each other, we were all able to learn more about the situation, learn more about everyone’s background, and in turn, when we go out into the world, we have these new insights.”

Hicks echoed that sentiment, saying that, after awareness, the next step in building diversity in lacrosse is understanding. Reaching that level requires a desire to learn.

“For any teammate that’s really trying to be an ally to their Black teammates, you’ve just got to talk to them,” Hicks said. “You’ve got to know where they come from. I know many people don’t want to do that because it’s extra work on top of the many things they’ve already got to do. But for it to really happen — for there to be some change — we’ve got to understand each other.”

With six Black players on its roster, Calvert Hall College High School in Towson, Maryland, is home to one of the most diverse high school lacrosse teams in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association.

But Calvert Hall players still look outside their team for inspiration and connection, and social media has been the driving force for forging those relationships.

Whenever Calvert Hall junior midfielder Jordan Jackson plays against another Black player, he always makes sure to ask for his Instagram handle or phone number.

“It is very good to see a familiar face when you’re out there,” Jackson said. “When I play a person that’s Black, I just see what they’re doing and how things are going with their life. I feel like that’s the best way to connect, and that’s how you build a small community within the big community.”

Senior midfielder Jaden Snow feels like he already knows most of the Black players he meets on the field. But as he’s gotten older, the connections he’s formed have gotten stronger.

“It’s gotten even more connected — guys that are in college, at the top-division level or in the pros, even with guys still in high school,” Snow said. “Sometimes it gets lonely when it’s only you or only a few of you.”

The rise of the Blaxers Blog account on Instagram, which highlights the accomplishments of Black players in lacrosse, has also contributed to that feeling of connection, according to Calvert Hall junior MJ Davis. (Blaxers Blog and USA Lacrosse Magazine are content partners.)

And just as Hicks serves as a role model at the collegiate level, Snow, Davis, Jackson and their teammates have worked to inspire the next generation of Black lacrosse players.

“There’s a lot of kids that I see that really want to play the sport, but they just don’t have anybody to look up to,” Snow said. “And when they see me, they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, maybe I can actually do this.’”

WHEN HE WAS STILL A PART OF HARLEM LACROSSE, Hicks leaned on his first coach, Spencer Riehl, for advice on everything from how to tie a tie and give a proper handshake to how to get the most power out of his behind-the-back shot. He said Riehl helped him to see the world in a new way

“He was trying his best to show us something different,” Hicks said.

Instead of admonishing Hicks when he fell asleep in class one morning, Riehl invited him to his office to nap on the couch, knowing that Hicks had had a hard couple of days. Riehl showed the young player ideas of understanding and how to be a role model for the next generation, which influences Hicks’ activism to this day.

Taking those lessons in stride, Hicks, Ince and their Johns Hopkins teammates spend their free time visiting local middle schools and playing pickup games of lacrosse with young Black kids in Baltimore, serving as friendly faces in a sport that often feels exclusionary.

“Even though these schools might not have a big platform, or the athlete specifically, it’s just like a snowball effect,” Ince said.

Unlike athletes with celebrity status such as Smith, Carlos and Kaepernick, lacrosse players — be they youth, high school or college athletes — don’t have massive platforms on which to promote social change within the sport. Instead, they’ve simply chosen to serve as examples.

“The stuff that extends off the field,” Hicks said, “is where you find the real activism.”