Moran had been looking for a way to act for months, long before this summer, but nothing had materialized. After George Floyd’s death, he called his Black players and spoke with their families.
He spoke with friends and alumni, all of whom shared similar experiences and a common motivation for change.
“It really opened my eyes to how impactful this was for them,” Moran said. “They were driven to tears and crying just to show how appreciative they were that I reached out. This has happened a lot in our country and no one had asked, ‘How are you doing?’ That was a turning point for me. We had to do something, but we didn’t know what.”
Moran continued dialogue with the six alums who later joined the discussions. Some are still coaches, like Gonsouland, who leads the nearby River Hill High School program. Some had experiences on the frontline, like Hernandez, who is a firefighter. Others work in education, like Smith, who works in administration at Howard University.
Together, the group spent weeks coming up with a curriculum to help educate the Retrievers program. They settled on a system in which the alumni presented a topic and the team broke up into “pods” to discuss the issues at further length. The hope was that the athletes at UMBC, if only a handful, could use the info to combat racism when they encounter it on and off the lacrosse field.
“You don’t have to say to somebody, ‘You have an obligation to say something about that,’” Smith said. “What you do is create a narrative that allows them to take all this information that has been triangulated from all these different perspectives, synthesize it for yourself, and hope that you can come to the conclusion that you have an obligation.”
The first discussion dealt with redlining, a practice of refusing loans or insurance to someone living in an area deemed a financial rick — a process with a history of discriminatory implementation.
After the initial presentation, led by Gonsouland, the six alums broke into groups with a handful of players. For several weeks, they’d discuss the topic and ask questions to better understand its effects on Black men and women.
“I was trying to weave everyone’s different story to show how redlining impacts so many areas of their life that you don’t realize until you take a step back,” Gonsouland said. “When I knew we were doing a good job was when one of our players, you could just tell his mind was blown. He said, ‘This is so messed up.’ They had never thought about it.”