Lacrosse World Mourns the Loss of Hobart All American Ed Howard

 Do you remember this poster? Hobart All American Defensemen Ed Howard # 26 throwing a over the head check on a unidentified Washington College player. 

I learned yesterday that Ed Howard had unexpectedly died (1957 to 2012). I believe Ed Howard was the first African American college player I ever saw. I still remember seeing this poster of of him above, throwing this great over the head check against a Washington College player in the 1977 Division III championship game. The photo was part of a 1978 U. S. National Team promotion. “The over the head check was my forte,” remembers Ed Howard. “It was my favorite because of my height [6’ 2’] and the fact I could get close to my opponent.” He goes on to say, I learned the check from [my defensive coach at Hobart] Dave Urick and perfected it via real time trial and error.” What’s unique about Howard’s story is that he never played lacrosse before coming to Hobart. And back when he played, Hobart was a power house in college lacrosse taking on all comers including Syracuse. In 1977 Hobart went 15 and 0 with Howard both starting, neutralizing other teams top attackman, and earning All American honors. This was a rare lacrosse photo back before the proliferation of lacrosse magazines in hard copy and online, and the multitude of lacrosse blogs including my own. Photos like this one represented some of the only outlets for lacrosse junkies like me to satisfy my craving for the game. Few newspapers back in the late 70s covered college games or stories about All-American selections. So when I saw this photo of Ed Howard I wanted to know more about him. 20 plus years later I got a chance interviewing Dave Urick, UVA Associate Head Coach Mark Van Arsdale who was a ball boy for the team when Howard played, and Ed Howard. I conducted the interviews back in 2009.  In the series I talked about  how Howard went from a Hobart walk on to becoming an All American.  I hope you enjoy the series and share with others what you learn about his lacrosse career. 

Hobart College Mourns the Loss of Ed Howard: http://www.hwsathletics.com/news/2012/6/18/SAA_0618120501.aspx

Ed Howard Obituary:  http://thekimblefuneralhome.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1511935&fh_id=13488

Coach Dave Urick on Ed Howard

Buffalo natives,  Hobart African American defensemen Mac Nelson (Timon High School) and Ed Howard (Canisius High School). Nelson, a football player who walked on and made the varsity, persuaded Howard, a former basketball player at the college, to walk on to the Hobart Lacrosse team in 1977. Photo circa 1978. Howard died on June 16, 2012.

Back when Ed Howard played lacrosse Coach Dave Urick served as the defensive coordinator of Hobart’s lacrosse program under head coach Jerry Schimdt (John Hopkins, National Lacrosse Hall Fame). Schimdt is the only lacrosse player to ever appear on the cover of Sport Illustrate during his playing days at the Hop. Ed Howard represented one of a host of Hobart lacrosse players that started for the Statesmen who never played the game before arriving in Geneva, N.Y. “We made a living out of kids like Eddie,” African Americans Marion “Mac” Nelson, Greg Williams (Henniger) and many other great athletes that we taught how to play the game of lacrosse,” says Coach Urick. “Hank Janczyk, the head coach at Gettysburg College, and Frank Fedorjaka, the head coach at Bucknell University were guys just like Ed,” good freshmen athletes who never played the game but learned it under Urick and Schimdt. Howard came to Hobart from Canisius High School in Buffalo, a prestigious Jesuit school where he excelled in the classroom and earned awards playing football, basketball and track and field. Ed held a sectional high jump record in track and excelled on the basketball court playing small forward in high school. Hobart’s basketball coach recruited Ed to play basketball but soon after the basketball season started his freshmen year at Hobart Ed did not see eye to eye with the head coach or his system and left the team. “I quit the team and left frustrated at winter break ready to transfer” says Howard. Just then Mac Nelson, a wide receiver on the football team and lacrosse walk on approached him. Nelson, a sophomore at the time told Howard “that the coaches had been following my situation on the basketball team and they wanted to meet with me,” recalls Ed; more tomorrow.

My Series on Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

"Once I got my stick skills together I was dangerous thereafter,” Hobart's Ed Howard Part 2

Ed Howard covering Syracuse’s Tim O’Hara, a 2^nd Team All-American selection in 1979. In Howard’s playing days the Statesmen dominated the Orange 24 – 8 in 1977, 15 – 9 in 1978, and 16-4 in 1979. Not an easy bit of history for this historian and SU lacrosse alum to write about. The scores above are representative of three years of good old fashioned butt whoopings! It was during this era that upstate teams, Cornell and Hobart, dominated college lacrosse. 

Speaking of his first year on Hobart’s varsity men’s lacrosse team, Ed Howard (Hobart 79) says, coach Urick “always had me cover the best incoming rookies, during practice” which really helped develop his game. Ed took to the Hobart defensive scheme under Urick which fit his athleticism well, “pressure was our game” Howard says, “and we had Rick Blick in the goal,” a three time All American and a two time U. S. National Team player. By the way, why hasn’t any Hobart alum or fans nominated Blick to the National Hall Fame? He’s got the credential folks. At the start of Howard’s sophomore year, a starting defenseman for the statesmen failed out of the school just before the team traveled south for spring break workouts and games. During stretching before a scrimmage against Hopkins, Coach Schmidt casually informed Howard that he would be starting. In the first half of the Hopkins game Howard picks up a ground ball and goes coast to coast and scores a goal. He would go on to start the rest of that year and scored another goal in Hobart’s National Championship victory over Washington College the same year. But he did a lot more than score goals. “From the time I became a starter as a sophomore, I was always assigned the opposition’s best offensive player. I took pride in that challenge and was very effective (more times than not) in shutting down/ or neutralizing the very top offensive players in the game during my era,” Howard recalls. “We had a lot of athletes on our teams over the years,” says Dave Urick, “but Ed he had something extra, he was really smooth and developed some nice takeaway checks.” The summer between his sophomore and junior year Howard spent hours working on his stick skills in a handball court back in Buffalo. “I grew up in the inner city, and black folks on the corner use to call me ‘college boy,’” recalls Howard. He worked on his stick work for hours during a time when black folks in the city of Buffalo had never heard of the game. “I had a great work ethic” and focused on becoming a complete player with a right and left hand that summer. It was like, “I went from blurred vision to 20-20 once I got my stick skills together.” He says, “I was dangerous thereafter.” More on the final two years of Ed’s career at Hobart over the remaining days of Black history month.

My Series on Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Hobart's Ed Howard on Signing Autographs for the First Time

At the close of my interview, I asked Ed Howard if he ever experienced any racism on the field “I never experienced anything like that,” he says, but on two occasions (one at Adelphi University on Long Island and the other at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania) white opponents called his teammate and fellow Buffalo native Mac Nelson, nigger. “When I heard that, you know I got in there because” I was ready to fight, “I wanted some,” recalls Howard. It’s interesting to me that these incidents did not happen down south when Hobart traveled to North Carolina and Maryland at the start of the spring semester in the mid to late 1970s. No, the incidents happened up north where historically most of us assume white folks are beyond that stuff. What’s also interesting is a story Ed told me about playing in the North South All Star game held at John Hopkins University in Baltimore his senior year. In contrast with the racist slurs Nelson confronted on Northern college campuses, for the first time in his college lacrosse playing career, two boys asked for Ed’s autograph, “Two white kids,” says, Ed. The request “shocked me” remembers Howard years later. Ed never played post-collegiate lacrosse after leaving Hobart, that’s a shame too. “By the end of his career he was spectacular,” says Marc Van Arsdale, Associate Head Men’s Lacrosse Coach at UVA and a former Hobart ball boy in the 1970s. Coach Van adds, “I often thought that if he had continued playing after college he would have been a good bet to be a USA Team Player.” In 2003, Hobart inducted Ed Howard into its Athletic Hall of Fame. His bio for the event reads in part, “A stifling defenseman, . . . Howard was a four-year letter-winner and a member of the College’s first two NCAA Championship teams (1976-77).” The bio goes on to say, “During his career, the Statesmen posted an impressive 49-8 (.860) record, including a 15-0 mark and the Division II/III championship in 1977.” Ed lived in New Jersey where he worked as a senior executive for Chubb Insurance. 

Ed Howard Obituary:  http://thekimblefuneralhome.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1511935&fh_id=13488


My Series on Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Ed Howard on The Desire to Win and Be the Best

Ed Howard in the spring of 1979 after winning the Graham Award as the team’s best defenseman, the Kraus Memorial Trophy as Hobart’s most outstanding senior athlete, and the Roger Frankel Award as the senior who contributed the most to the Hobart community during his undergraduate career. 

Ed Howard earned second team All Americans his junior year at Hobart College and he was named a co-team captain and first team All American his senior year. As the caption above shows, Ed also received a plethora of honors at Hobart's 1979 sports banquet. “Ed was one of those student athletes who made you look like you knew what you were doing, says Dave Urick, the Head Lacrosse Coach at Georgetown University and Ed’s defensive Coach at Hobart. “In junior high school I lived to go to the Hobart practices every day after school,” says University of Virginia Associate Head Lacrosse Coach Marc Van Arsdale. “Guys like Ed Howard were my heroes. Ed was one of the guys who always took time to talk to me in the locker room before or after practice. He wasn't boisterous, but he was always friendly and thoughtful in his dealings with a 13 year old kid hanging around a team of college men.” Van Arsdale, insists, “my experiences as a ball boy . . . probably had a great deal to do with my decision to enter the coaching profession. Similarly, after a Hobart Mt Washington Lacrosse Club down in Baltimore as part of his last spring spent in the south as a collegiate athlete. A guy from Morgan State University (a historically black college and University) came up to him and said, “man you have no idea what that poster of you means to so of us down here, so many [African American lacrosse players] have one,” the guy said. Like Navy’s Syd Abernethy, Ed has no stories of throngs of black kids swarming after games seeking his autograph. But he knew folks were watching him and as a result, he says, I “tried to represent Hobart College the best I could, that’s all.” He adds, “I had an insatiable desire to win and to be the absolute best I could be,” and that’s what Ed focused on not on being any bodies role model as Charles Barkley would say. Both Ed and Syd Abernethy had no idea the impact their careers had on me as an African American adolescent just starting to play lacrosse. Marc Van Arsdale argues that “Maybe it was part of Ed's legacy that in 1987 the Hobart team had 2 African American Captains—Tim Clark (Henniger) and Ray “Tiny” Crawford (Manhasset).


My Series on Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Developing A Love For the Game Part 1

Hobart All American Ed Howard. He died suddenly last week  

The defining moment in Ed Howard's decision to play lacrosse came during a meeting with Hobart lacrosse coaching staff. Coach Urick and Schimdt “encouraged me to come out for lacrosse,” says Ed Howard. He goes on to say, “From my perspective, I owe my entire lacrosse experience to Coaches Schmidt and Urick. What they saw in a former basketball player that made them think he could be a lacrosse player is beyond me?” The fact that at Hobart lacrosse was king also played a role in decision to take up the game. “I had never heard of lacrosse [but] I could see that it was THE SPORT on campus,” says Howard. He started practicing with Hobart’s B team where freshmen recruits and walk on players tested their metal. 

Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Developing A Love For The Game Part 2

Ed Howard covering a Syracuse attackman in the 1970s 

A newbie to the sport, Hobart's Ed Howard quickly developed a love for the game after just a couple of late night practices in the colleges gym, back then Hobart would practice at 10 pm at night after the school’s winter sports teams, who had priority when in season, finished with the gym. “It was the first sport that I played that combined all my past sports into one” football, basketball, and track and field, recalls Howard. After six B team practices Howard went home on Spring break. The varsity team needed another defensemen and coach Schimdt asked coach Urick to bring a B team player up. “I asked Jerry, who do you want, the best lacrosse player or the best athlete,” says Urick, “I told him to bring Ed up because he was the best athlete on the B team. So Jerry agreed and we called Ed up.” More tomorrow on Ed’s first game experience in a Hobart game uniform.

Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Remembering Hobart's Ed Howard

In the winter of 1976 Ed Howard had just become the newest of a long list of, what Hobart All American and Associate Head Lacrosse Coach at the University Virginia, Marc Van Arsdale has coined, DNPs—guys who did not play in high school. “I was lucky enough to be a ball boy for a bunch of those Jerry Schmidt/Dave Urick Hobart Teams in the 70's” says Van Arsdale who grow up in Geneva, New York. “There were some ferocious, physical athletes playing defense for Hobart in those days [who] were DNP's—Tom Korn, Tom Moffitt, Bootie Gringeri (all defensive football standouts)—but Ed, once he learned the game, was a more graceful defender,” Van Arsdale recalls. “I remember his great footwork/quickness . . . maybe attributable to his hoops upbringing,” he theorizes. Howard remembers being home in Buffalo on winter break after 6 B team practices when he received phone call for then defensive coordinator Dave Urick tell him that he’s been invited to come to up to varsity. “I am looking out the window and it was a terrible ice storm and here’s coach asking me if I want to join the varsity team on spring break down in North Carolina.” Back in those days Hobart we would play Carolina, NC State, Hopkins, and Navy on spring break. “Looking at the [bitter cold] weather outside it was an easy decision.” Howard remembers telling Urick without hesitation “I am going!” As freshmen Ed played mostly on Hobart’s man down defense. He had no fear of big offensive guns he faced on man down because he had no history on the players and programs he was facing to go on. “I had the advantage,” explains Howard, I was not encumbered” by the reputation All Americans, “plus in basketball and football I was an offensive players” and could anticipate the other guys moves. “I was 6’ 2’’ 200 lbs and ran a sub 4.5, 40- yard dash—I had the advantage in my mind and it didn’t matter who you were to me,” says Howard. Lord willing and the snow doesn’t get to high, we will have more tomorrow on Ed’s first season as a Statesmen.

The Recruiting Process of a Rising Senior Part 2 of 2

Herkimer General Fred Opie Covering Hobart's Rick Vacion in 1983

Here’s part two of the story about helping the son of a high school friend who I describe as rising senior this coming year whose game took off this past spring and summer. The post starts out with his mother describing her take on what one can do to market themselves to a top college program.  She writes, “Obviously, it takes lots of hard work to get the place where that coach will see you do the "good" thing.   There is not a straight path; each student will find his/her own way.  Stay open minded and be willing to entertain all possibilities.” To email responded that its not luck that has opened doors for me. “I work like it's all up to me, because it is, and pray like it's all up to God, because it is.” I went on to say, “a successful person described luck as when hard work meets an opportunity. Another said stress in large part comes from a lack of preparation. It will be much easier should this happen again with your other children.” I sum a successful recruiting experience depends on understanding the process and tapping into networks that can help you along the way. For the best of the best the process can be a quick sprint. But for tweeners like I was back as a high school senior in 1981 and then again as a junior college guy in 1983, its most often a marathon. Also, the process and rules are changing so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up with best practices.

Are You a Tweener: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2012/06/are-you-tweener.html

My College Recruiting Series: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2010/09/dealing-with-rejection-as-lacrosse.html

Coach You Have A lot Of Influence: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2012/06/be-careful-what-you-say-to-people-you.html

My Hard Work and Lacrosse Stories: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=%22hard+work%22

Hobart All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard

Allan Hodish and Hempstead Lacrosse

Click this image to enlarge and read this 1980 article on Hempstead Youth Lacrosse. That's coach Allan Hodish  in the photo on the left. Guest blogger Aaron Jones reflects on what Hodish brought to Hempstead many years ago. Jones went on from Hempstead to play at Cornell in the late 1980s where he appeared in a National Championship game against John Hopkins.

[Guest blogger Aaron Jones] My relationship with this game started from unique circumstances. Let me give you a little insight into my background so you can understand what I mean by “unique circumstances.” Hempstead, Long Island in 1975 was not unlike most communities of its time, very homogeneous in its makeup. In Hempstead, there were people of similar backgrounds that lived together side by side to form a close nit community. Hempstead was almost entirely an African American community. It was a proud community of modest means but deep in its history of athletic prowess at every level. Year after year football, basketball, baseball and track teams from youth levels all the way up through high school varsity sports were successfully competing on their athletic playing fields throughout long island and beyond. The Salvation Army youth basketball team was famed around the world for its dominance. The varsity basketball team was a feature story in the local and regional news seemingly every year for its accomplishments on the court. The football team was as successful as the others, always fairing very well in league competition. I think you get the point, in Hempstead athletic excellence was the norm year in & year out! Around that time a new gentlemen came into the Hempstead community with an eye on bringing a new sport to the town. He was very different from the normal Hempstead coach, Jewish by faith, outspoken by nature, and caring to his core! Alan Hodish began touring the Hempstead streets with his Toyota Celica hatchback encouraging Hempstead youth to make their way to the local park. There Hodish demonstrated a new sport called lacrosse and influenced scores of boys to give the game a shot. I was one of those young kids picking up this foreign sport for the first time and through it I earned an opportunity to attend Cornell University where I played lacrosse in the 1980s.

Jim Brown Lacrosse All American: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Jim+Brown

Navy’s African American All American Syd Abernethy: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Abernethy

Hobart’s African American All American Ed Howard: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/search?q=Ed+Howard