Feature Friday: Women's Lacrosse Takes Action Against Racial Injustice

“We will listen and learn to educate ourselves and be a driving force in creating change by expressing empathy, raising awareness, and continuing peaceful conversations.

“We will make sure this is not a conversation that ends in a few days or weeks, but one that is instilled in our values forever.” 

Above is a powerful portion of the statement against racial injustice released by Maryland women’s lacrosse on June 11 following the unnecessary acts of violence that led to the death of George Floyd and so many others.

Five months later, the Maryland women’s lacrosse team, led by the group of Sarah Ayer, Madison Hine, Maddie McSally, Andrea McTaggart and Emily Sterling made sure that statement wasn't just words, but tangible action.   

“We wanted to put our words to action,” said McTaggart.

It began when the group started a book club over the summer to educate themselves on the history of racial injustice and discuss the issues surrounding our country. 

The group, which was started by Catie May, read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and met weekly over Zoom to discuss. 

“A huge goal of our book club was to not make this about us reading a book, but to go beyond that and educate ourselves in hopes of planting a seed into people around you,” said McSally. “To get them to think about ‘why do I have these biases’ and get to the root of the issue to incite change. Even if it’s just one little seed at a time, hopefully it will add up to have people question why they’ve been thinking like this before.”

After the small group book club, the initiative expanded to the entire team where they read books, watched documentaries and movies relating to racial justice and discussed them on team zooms over the summer. 

“When you learn about these things and you’re looking at something, it’s not like we all have to drop everything and become social activists,” said Ayer. “We all have our own area, like our majors, or invoking change on the lacrosse team. When everyone comes and learns together but then goes back out into their areas, that’s super efficient and makes intuitive sense.” 

That’s what led to McTaggart and Ayer’s project development to educate others --  a website titled “Smart Terps” filled with information, resources, books to read, movies to watch, petitions to sign, voting information etc. all relating to racial injustice.

McTaggart compiled the information. Ayer handled the formatting and design of the website. Once completed, it was sent to just the lacrosse team. Later during the summer after seeing the impact it had on the team, it was forwarded to all student-athletes at Maryland to give them a one-stop shop to educate themselves on racial injustice. 

“After having all these conversations, I thought it would be a good way for people on our team to access resources on their own,” said McTaggart. “A lot of the barriers people have is that they are afraid to be wrong and afraid to not know the answers. Our goal was to provide that information in an easy and accessible way so that people do understand the core concepts and points of racial injustice. It started with that.

“We know that this isn’t about us, it’s about the people we’re impacting, and it was past time for us to do something. We can’t just read our books and go along with our lives. We actually have to take action.”

As the group began their fall season on the field and school off of it, they wanted to make sure they were still invoking change and making a difference. When an email arrived in their inbox in late September from Assistant AD - Marketing Strategy & Fan Experience Jordan Looby calling for volunteers to join the athletic department’s committee on racial equality & justice, Ayer, Hine, McSally, McTaggart and Sterling realized that this would be the perfect opportunity to continue to take action.

The committee, which includes the five lacrosse players, a cheerleader and staff members from throughout the athletic department has partnered with the NAACP for community service initiatives, has plans on setting up panels including student-athletes, alumni and professors, and came up with the idea for student-athletes and staff make personal statements about the fight for racial justice by choosing expressions of solidarity on a T-shirt, including “Equality,” “Unity,” “Respect,” “Justice”, “Empathy”, “Speak Up” or “I Got Your Back”, among other initiatives. 

Ayer, Hine, McSally and Sterling all chose “Justice” for their T-shirts. 

“I chose ‘Justice’ because I thought it most embodied what we’ve done for the past few months stands for,” said Sterling. “With the death of George Floyd, the main call for me was justice. That’s what motivated me to educate myself and everyone around me. That was the driving force for me.”

“You can’t have the other words listed without wanting justice for everybody,” said McSally. 

“As a criminology major, I learn about all the injustice that happens in our system and how truly racist our criminal justice system is,” said Hine. “I feel like if we don’t start from there and seek justice in that avenue, it wouldn’t branch out to the other aspects as much. It needs to be done in policy first.” 

“You can’t have peace without justice,” said Ayer. “That has to be the end goal.” 

McTaggart chose speak up.

“I felt like that phrase was the most powerful to me. Empathy, unity, equality, all those words don’t matter if you don’t speak up and say something about it. You can be as educated as you think you are but if you don’t speak up and say something and you’re not accountable for your own actions and your peers actions, then you haven’t done anything. There needs to be that level of accountability. We have to do more than educate ourselves, we have to step up and speak up. As we deal with that cognitive dissonance within ourselves and the cowardness of  being afraid to speak up, people are dying. We need to do better.”

From over the summer to now and moving forward, Maryland women’s lacrosse is committed to making a difference. 

“We didn’t want it to just end in a book club and over the summer,” said Hine. “We wanted to do something to create change.”