Navy Lacrosse Coach is Ready, Willing and Able
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By DERON SNYDER
The U.S. Naval Academy has played men’s lacrosse since 1908 and won 17 national championships — including eight in a row at one point. When the Midshipmen open their 104th season on Saturday, they’ll be led by Rick Sowell, who in June became the program’s eighth coach.
If Sowell gets double takes, it’s something that’s both understandable and not uncommon. He’s an African American in a sport that’s overwhelmingly made up of white players and coaches. But he’s exceptional at his job and has been so for a long time; he wouldn’t be Navy’s head coach otherwise.
A few days after he accepted Navy’s offer, the enormity hit Sowell as visited the program’s Hall of Fame in the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. “It is a big deal,” Sowell told the Washington Times. “I probably underestimated that a little bit coming into it, though I knew what I was getting myself into, no doubt.
“But I didn’t realize until I got here quite the magnitude,” he said. “Honestly, it was one of the lures of why I wanted to be here, because for the first time, I’m taking over a program that has a lot of tradition. There was something intriguing about that.”
