Tuesday night, African American voices from around the lacrosse world were heard in the CityLax webinar “Breaking Down Walls, One Ground Ball at a Time.”

Moderated by Eamon McAnaney, the webinar featured prominent men’s and women’s athletes from the professional, collegiate and high school ranks talking about the recent racial injustices surrounding the death of George Floyd. Over 300 people tuned into the session, and future sessions were promised because of its reception.

Jules Heningburg, who shared his family’s story on USLaxMagazine.com on May 29, kicked off the discussion.

“I knew I had a voice in the game to a certain extent, and if I could share that empathy that I was feeling in my heart for both my family and, like I said, my brothers in the game, I felt that like was a responsibility for me to do that,” Heningburg said. “My motivation and my courage was to make the video and put it down on paper.”

Heningburg’s former teammate at Rutgers, Chad Toliver, said he experienced awkward situations in the locker room with teammates unaccustomed to having African American teammates. Toliver said Heningburg and his father became his allies.

“Jules wholeheartedly could tell you that I had to deal with a lot of stuff,” he said. “People fear what they don’t know, and a lot of people didn’t really understand me. For a lot of people, this was their first time really being in the locker room with an African American. It was just sometimes uncomfortable for them.”

Finding allies is what helped Britt Brown during her collegiate career. The goalkeeper started 35 games for the Quakers from 2016-17 and was often the only person of color on the field.

She passionately recalled on instance in which her teammates made assumptions and didn’t have a necessary conversation with her. While everyone on the team was fighting for an NCAA tournament run, their visions and experiences didn’t necessarily align.

“Maybe I did struggle buying a stick. Maybe I did struggle getting new cleats every season,” Brown said. “And those struggles, sometimes, were not fully understood by my peers. Finding a way to find allies and finding a way to have that discussion was really important to me.”

Sometimes, finding allies in the lacrosse community can be difficult. As a predominantly white sport, there are both barriers to entry and barriers to acceptance. Nigel Andrews, who graduated from Harvard in May, at first found it challenging to get out of his comfort zone and have necessary conversations with those around him.

Once he opened up, he found acceptance.

“Looking back on my experience, when I was younger, I was very nonconfrontational,” he said. “I was afraid of being uncomfortable and having those uncomfortable conversations. When people would say things to me like, ‘You’re the whitest black guy,’ those things would hurt me and make me feel upset. Because I was afraid to confront them and be upset, I never said anything.

“My sophomore year of high school, I realized I had to change my ways and be uncomfortable. When I got to college, I made a concerted effort to bring my friends in and have a conversation my freshman year with them and explain to them how my experience was different than theirs.”

Coaches can help in the education of players of all races and backgrounds. Carter Henry, a recent graduate of the McCallie School in Tennessee who is committed to Yale for lacrosse, said that his coach made an impact.

“The school I went to, we had an African American coach, so he taught me along with other African American players how to break the ice with people that don’t look like you,” he said. “The reality is, being black in a predominantly white sport, people are always going to look at you differently because you’re the minority. It was making it a point to start having conversations with my white teammates or whoever it was and making them realize that I’m not much different than you, even though I’m a different color than you.”

The hour-long webinar shed light on the thoughts and opinions heard widely around the lacrosse world in the last few weeks, though each of the panelists agreed that there is more to be done to make lacrosse more inclusive.

“This is long overdue, and I’m so glad we’re having this meeting,” Toliver said.