From Icon to Eyekonz, a Philadelphia Story

This article was composited from previous reporting by Mark Macyk in 2019 and Matt DaSilva in 2022. For more on Eyekonz Sports, go to eyekonzsports.com.

THE 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL CAME TO THE SIDELINE IN TEARS, clutching her arm to cover the bruise. She sought the shade and anonymity of the pop-up canopy behind the bench. Jazmine Smith yanked her back into the sunlight.

“Look at me,” Smith said. “What’s your ‘I am’ affirmation?”

Sobbing, the girl said softly, “I am powerful.”

“Say it again,” Smith said.

Her voice still shaking, the girl replied, “I am powerful.”

“Take a deep breath,” Smith said, her tone shifting from stern to encouraging as the girl inhaled, then exhaled. “Now say it again.”

Composed, the girl straightened her back, stretched her shoulders and elevated her chin.

“I am powerful.” 

SMITH’S GRANDFATHER WOULD BE PROUD. When she was a little girl, he hung a huge mirror by the front door. Before Smith could leave the house, she would have to look in the mirror, deliver an “I am” affirmation and tell the reflection who she was.

“If you don’t know who you are,” her grandfather would say, “as soon as you walk out into that world, they’re going to tell you.”

Smith very quickly learned who she was. She was a tall girl from North Philly who just wanted to play basketball and jump double Dutch but was forced by her grandparents to play lacrosse and field hockey when she moved to the suburbs. The new sports opened a new world and helped her further cement her identity.

Who does Smith see in the mirror today?  As founder and CEO of Eyekonz, the nonprofit she revived in 2013 to bring lacrosse and field hockey to girls in inner-city Philadelphia, Smith now spends her time helping a new generation of girls from Philadelphia tell the world who they are.

“None of my coaches can teach the game if the players don’t have a sense of themselves,” Smith said. “The nature of our curriculum is centered around making sure these kids have a sense of belonging.”

Establishing this sense of self means teaching not only lacrosse, but also African-American and Hispanic history. This way, even if a player may not see her place in the history of the game, she does see her place in the history of the world.

Smith knows how important it is. When she arrived in Villanova, on Philadelphia’s Main Line, she didn’t see many girls who looked like she did.

“It felt foreign,” Smith said. “But I had loving parents and grandparents who raised me, and that’s why I was able to be successful. That’s why I wanted to start this initiative. I wanted to give something greater than I had seen in the Philadelphia area.”

That she has. Eyekonz has received national attention for starting lacrosse teams at some of the city’s most underserved high schools. They’ve also helped set up a team at Lincoln University, a historically black college outside Philadelphia.

Smith’s players also have claimed a national spotlight. Krin Brown, 13, was recently featured in a Super Bowl campaign — produced by Sports Illustrated and sponsored by Dove — about body positivity. The article is about her journey to self-belief through lacrosse, a sport in which she thrives while coping with junior rheumatoid arthritis and amplified pain syndrome. Eyekonz was the subject of a Nike-produced documentary in 2021.

About 500 girls from all over Philadelphia participate in Eyekonz. Self-discovery sometimes means leaving the city for the unfamiliar confines of suburbia.

In 2019, Eyekonz headed up the Main Line to Havertown to take part in the Trent Stetler Play Day, a tournament to raise awareness for mental health. After a game, Haverford’s players came up to exchange phone numbers. They said they’d meet up and go to the movies.

“This was monumental for our girls,” Smith said. “They were like, ‘Wow they really want to get to know us.’ That’s what this sport is all about.”

Eyekonz is worth knowing. That same year, eight players participated in the USA Lacrosse National Tournament in Delaware. One of the players was a goalie who made 37 saves in a game against Ridley.

Afterward, again the suburban players had questions. Who was this goalie? Where did she come from?

The goalie was Kimona Evans. She came from Jamaica and then Southwest Philly. That was the first time she ever played goalie.

Smith found a similar phenomenon three years later when she entered an Eyekonz team in the 2022 World Lacrosse Women’s Festival in Towson, Md. The event was part of the 2022 World Lacrosse Women’s Championship featuring the world’s best players at the senior level.

That’s where the opening scene of this article took place. And where moments later, Smith pulled two players off the field for jogging rather than sprinting back on defense. This time, she shooed them toward the tent.

“There’s greatness in you,” she said, frustrated. “Sit down now and listen to Tina Sloan Green. Listen to the woman who built Temple.”

STEP UP AND STEP OUT.

Ever since Tina Sloan Green shattered every stereotype in lacrosse — first as a U.S. Women’s National Team player and then as a three-time NCAA championship-winning coach at Temple — she has lived by those words. It’s why the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame coach has mostly eschewed the spotlight since she retired in 1992.

But after undergoing brain tumor surgery in 2021 and recovering from a temporary loss of memory, Sloan Green decided it was time to step up again.

“I saw what was going on with Eyekonz,” Sloan Green said. “It’s a movement. They’ve got to see it. There’s a benefit to being in a diverse environment. You have to sell that point.”

Sloan Green can still sell it, alright. She recently won the Theodore Roosevelt Award — the NCAA’s highest individual honor — for her life’s work as a trailblazer for women of color in sports.

At age 80, she moves more gingerly. She was measured in her steps and careful not to lose her balance as she walked from the turf to the grass field that day at Goucher College.

But when it came time to cross the field during a stoppage in play, her gait hastened. She power walked as Smith and a reporter tried to keep pace.

“I want people to know I can still move,” Sloan Green said. “And they can see me in the morning when I’m doing my exercises, running. They can watch then too. Gotta let ’em see it.”

Then she turned to the reporter.

“And I want them to see me with you, because you’re an important part of this puzzle,” she said to the reporter, a white man. “Who do you represent?”

SMITH HESITATED TO SAY YES.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and increased public awareness of police brutality in 2020, the Eyekonz players wanted to organize a march in the name of Black women who had died at the hands of law enforcement.

“It’s a little dangerous in Philly,” Smith told them. Her daughter was one of the ringleaders.

Instead, the team workshopped public policy proposals to send to local and state officials. But they still wanted to march. So they researched the cases of previously nameless victims of police brutality and created posters to go with their lacrosse sticks. They marched from Eyekonz’s home field in Strawberry Mansion to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Fairmount neighborhood where Sloan Green lives.

“It translated onto the field. As soon as they did that, the whole program changed,” Smith said. “Their self-confidence — they felt like they belonged. And they knew they had a voice.”

Sloan Green lamented that teams today break down huddles with their sticks up. “We used to do hands in,” she said. “That was important, to touch each other.”

And to see hands that looked like yours.

“This is an amazing opportunity. You don’t see a lot of all-Black teams,” said Samiah Hayes, whom Smith singled out as having legitimate Division I potential as a lacrosse player if she applies herself in the coming years. “It’s a good way to build a family. I’ve learned to gain more self-confidence and to trust others more.”

Hayes was one of the players Smith chastised before sending them to “Mom Tina” under the tent. Sloan Green urged them to think feet-first on defense, like in basketball, but did not get a chance to say much more. Another coach competing in the 14U division of the World Lacrosse Women’s Festival — a white woman — interrupted them.

“I just wanted to say hi and thank you for what you’ve done for the game,” the woman said.

“It’s important for the new generation, not just with Eyekonz but across the world, to know the sustenance and the foundation that Tina Sloan Green created,” Smith said. “After she was sick, I was like, ‘You know what? What better way to give homage to the woman that paved the way not only for myself and for my players, but for women’s lacrosse, than to have her come back and share her knowledge?’ Since she came on, it’s like she never stopped.”