When the first European settlers arrived, the land of the Cusabo tribes stretched from the Charleston peninsula all the way down the coast of South Carolina to the Savannah River. 

Three centuries later, Cusabo Nation Lacrosse, a US Lacrosse member league, is helping some of Charleston’s neediest students realize that their world can stretch beyond the city limits, too.

It started in 2014, when some local lacrosse parents headed to a park with donated lights and equipment as part of Charleston’s Friday Night Lights program. Kids wandered past and were intrigued by the new sport. They kept showing up. They wanted something to do. 

Eventually, one of the players presented one of the parents, Eric Strickland, with a proposition.

Lacrosse was easy. Could Strickland help with his homework?

Strickland, who is a Cusabo board member, started tutoring the player and buying him lunch at a local restaurant. The other players would walk past and see the study session through the window. They wanted to be tutored, too. They also wanted lunch. Strickland had a problem. He couldn’t tutor that many kids. And he couldn’t buy that many lunches. He needed more space and resources.

Strickland went to a local elementary school and asked whether Cusabo Lacrosse could set up some kind of formal tutoring program. The principal said that there were bureaucratic hurdles, so it might take a year. She asked who the kids that needed tutoring were. Strickland told her it was the lacrosse players. For those students, the principal said, tutoring could begin the next day.

They were all high-energy students and natural leaders. They were also class clowns who tended to disrupt class. Getting them on track would benefit everyone.

“It was a defense mechanism,” Strickland said. “They didn’t want to be found out if a teacher called on them, so they would cut up or act disinterested. They had this fear in the classroom that they didn’t have on the field.”

Thus began the Cusabo Scholars program. After school, around 10 to 15 elementary school students play lacrosse for 45 minutes, then go inside for 45 minutes of tutoring. Mentors spend time helping with homework and then they read a book or go over flashcards. They also have snacks.

“We realized what they were missing is that individualized attention,” said Joycee Darby, who now runs the Cusabo Scholars program. 

The players are a diverse group. Some of them are basketball or football stars. Some are more artistic kids, who came to play with their friends. All of them must attend the tutoring sessions if they want to play lacrosse. No one complains.

“We’ve tried to convince the older kids that eventually you’re going to run out of the opportunity to play athletics if you don’t have the academics,” Strickland said. “They’re realizing what they do in the classroom matters.”

The snacks help, too. And while Charleston doesn’t have the deepest lacrosse roots, the players are taking to the sport quickly. 

“Our best recruiting tool is just playing,” Darby said. “We get kids that come up and just think the sticks look cool without even knowing what it is.”

Some players still call the sport “cross,” but improvements are being seen on the field and the classroom. Cusabo also provides its players, who attend low-income schools, with exposure. They go to camps. They’ve hopped on the ferry and played tournaments outside of Charleston. One player went up to Chapel Hill to play in front of college coaches.

That’s even further than the original Cusabo Nation’s reach.

“Just giving these kids the chance to get out of Charleston has been so important,” Strickland said. “We were surprised how many had never even been to the beach. Taking them to a tournament 45 minutes away felt like a different world.”