Syracuse Post Standard
May 2003
By Dick Case
Don’t get them started. Don’t get the Old Sticks from the Onondaga Nation and LaFayette High School started on lacrosse stories. We’ll be there for a week.
As far as these respected seniors are concered, the national world of lacrosse – shoot, the international world – has a focus amoung the men on the Onondaga Nation and the school distict that surrounds it south of Syracuse.
The game, which started as an Iroquois healing rite, is as old as the Onondaga Nation. Thats plenty old.
The tradition’s young at the schoool. LaFayette put together its first team in 1960. The majority of the players back then were Onondagas.
Those Old Sticks, and a few young ones, plan to celebrate the tradition this weekend with the first lacrose reunion at the school, funded by the Onondaga Nation.
They’ll have a ceremoney durng the halftime of the high school game between LaFayette and Baldwinsville, and a party at Log Cabin retaurant Friday night.
“We’ve never had a reunion before,” says LaVerne Doctor. Verne played on LaFayette’s 1963 county championship team. “About a year and a half ago, some of us got together at a wake and decided we wanted to see each other more often.
“It started small but now we’re having an all-lacrosse reunion. Ten members of the original tream will be there.”
Verne figures LaFayette lacrosse has more than 400 alumni. “I’d like to see 300 show up,” he said.
In 43 years, the teams have played in 20 championships. This year, the LaFayette Lancers are undefeated, ranked No. 2 in the tate, 14th in the nation.
So there we were, sitting around the table at the new Onondaga Naion arena on Route 11, talking lacrosse.
Besides Verne, we had King Lyons, a member of the first team in 1960; Dave Knapp, the LaFayette town councilor and teammate of Verne’s; Chief Irving Powless Jr., who sill playes the game in his 70’s ; his son Neal, a 21st century Onondaga Lacrosse ace; and Sid Hill, a LaFayette stickman who graduated in 1970.
Sid’s the Iroquois tadadaho, chief of chiefs. There’s an Onodaga Lacrosse Club picture picture on a yonder wall that includes his grandfather, Ezekiel Hill. Irv Powless’ grandfather is there too.
My grandfather, my father (Irving), me and my sons (Neal, Bradley and Barry),” Irv’s saying. “We all played. And next, this guy …”
He points to his grandson Maximus, Neal’s son , who’ll soon be handling a stick in the bak yard, the way he did. Neal’s a pro and college All-American. He starred in the Lacrosse World Championships last year in Australia.
Lacrosse is a serious sport amoung Onondaga men. They play in the minors league at 4 and keep at it, throught he various divisions, until they’re grandfathers. When they die, their stick goes with them.
The LaFayette school district includes the Onondaga Nation and its elementary school. Young native athletes had their own lacrosse programs – including box lacrosse – but the high school at LaFayette had no team until 1960, when local school teams began to reappear after more than 20 years. A state rule that coaches had to be school employees killed most programs.
A member of the LaFayette community, a state welfare department worker named Walt Liddiard, decided his neighbors should be playing lacrosse. Walt’s still in LaFayette and will be at the reunion. He tells me, “there had been Indian youngsters at the school for years but the boys didn’t always graduate. I went to the principal and told him we had to do something.”
“Here we had some of the best lacrosse players in the country. We needed a team. We organized one – we had a youn science teacher (Carl Weist) ho was the leader- and pretty soon we started to win games.”
That 1960 team had but 25 players and gear from the Syracuse University Program. King Lyons recalls “going through the halls, asking guys to try it. They did and it took off.”
The Old Sticks I talked to this week agree with Walt about the program giving them the incfentive to finish school. It also let them show their skills to their neighbors, and college recuiters.
Sid Hill says, “If it wasn’t for lacrosse, I wouldn’t have finished high school. It gives you pride, keeps you going.”
Neal Powless quickly admits he’d never gone to college – Nazareth – without his lacrosse skills. He smiles broadly:”I’m 28 and I’ve played in 3 world games.”
I heard the same sentiment from Dave Knapp, who learned to play the game in the pasture of his famil’s dairy farm. For him, a lacrosse scholarship wasa his ticket to West Point, and a carreer in the military.
“Lacrosse gave me a leg up,” Dave Explains. “That’s the debt I owe these guys.”
Walt Liddiard mentioned another benefit, which is seconded by the sticks: The game brought the town’s white and native communities together on the playing field. Sid Hill feels the skills of the LaFayette players notched up the skills of the teams they played on and turned this small school in the hills into a kind of lacrosse academy.
Don Fisher is Class of ’86 from LaFayette. He teaches history at Niagara Community College and turned hi PhD. Dissertation ino a recent book, “Lacrosse: A History of the Game.”
Don says his hometown’s reputation as a cradle of lacrosse isn’t surprising if we consider the presence of Iroquois in Upstate New York. He credits LaFayette and SU with “breaking down social and cultural barriers” through the game.
SU’s first lacrosse coach, Laurie Cox , recuited Onondaga players for his Team AS earl as 1917.
LaVerne Doctor moved from LaFayette to a starring role on SU lacrosse teams. This retires investigator for the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department feels the same “has been an important aspect of all our lives.”
Irv Powless speaks of watching his sons learn their skills in the back yard of their home on the nation territory. King Lyons talks proudly of “our guys” who went onto make names for themselves. Sid Hill remembers the the friends the game has brought to him, not to mention leadership training.
“When you’re playing lacrosse, you’re out there. You may be noticed by the clan mothers: ‘He can lead’ they say.” It was those women who picked Sid to oversee all of the Iroquois in New York.
Neal Powless has a short, sweet take; “It’s a good feeling,” he says.