He’s The Black Lacrosse Player. Some use the name admiringly. He’s a pioneer, the sport’s first African-American superstar since Jim Brown. Some use it derisively. He’ll take the game to the inner cities, he’ll mess up what’s already working.

Some just wish the tag would disappear. He’s simply another top player on another top college team, and looking at him any other way only reveals lacrosse’s deep-rooted homogeneity.

John Christmas, The Black Lacrosse Player, is stuck in between the squabble, hoping to bring attention to his sport and yet slip into its anonymity. As a sophomore attacker on the Virginia men’s lacrosse team — a squad that travels to Syracuse for a game Saturday in the Carrier Dome — Christmas cradles the many responsibilities that, for better or worse, come with his title.

Win games. Turn heads. Open doors. And in the process, don’t piss off more people than you need to.

‘It adds to the pressure for John, and I think he understands that,’ Virginia head coach Dom Starsia said. ‘He has a very unique place in the game right now. He has a responsibility to his race.’

In a way, he is the race. The Black Lacrosse Player. Not one of many.

Sure, a handful of Division I schools have one or two African-Americans on the roster. Princeton defender Damien Davis is a preseason first-team All-American. Johns Hopkins’ Kyle Harrison is a talented midfielder who started all 14 games last year as a freshman.

Yet it’s Christmas who’s got the once-in-a-coaching-career talent. Last season, while leading the Cavaliers to the NCAA Final Four, Christmas piled up 44 points, including 29 goals. Ready or not, willing or unwilling, he became a revolutionary. Malcolm STX.

‘John Christmas is one of the most important players to play lacrosse in a long time,’ Starsia said. ‘He’s a transitional player for this sport, because he can help lacrosse expand to places it’s never seen before.

‘People are asking, ‘Is this boy going to make a difference?’ I think the answer is yes.’

For some, he already has. Starsia constantly gets requests from inner-city kids’ groups and urban centers asking for information or videos on Christmas. Some even want him to visit.

As for Christmas, he’s cautious about where he gives his time. He’s stopped giving all but a select few interviews and was not made available for comment for this story. He’s aware that lacrosse has long been inhabited by the affluent sons of Long Island and Baltimore, but he doesn’t want to become the poster boy for everyone else.

‘He just wants to make sure people know that he’s more than just a black guy playing lacrosse,’ said Jason Christmas, John’s older brother by eight years and a former lacrosse player at Villanova. ‘That’s something everyone looks at first — he’s the African-American lacrosse player. But if he wasn’t an African-American, he’d just be another good lacrosse player.’

Or another great lacrosse player. Last year, Christmas played alongside legendary Virginia scorer Conor Gill, who’s already been named Rookie of the Year in his first professional season. Without Gill, even more is expected of Christmas this season, said Starsia, who added that Christmas is on the brink of a ‘Michael Powell level.’

Christmas, only 5 feet, 9 inches, and 175 pounds, attacks with speed and quickness, evident even when he first took up the game as a third-grader in Ardmore, Pa. Two years later, a Virginia alum watching Christmas at a Baltimore youth festival called Starsia, saying that he’d found him a player.

‘Coach, there’s this black kid named Christmas that you have to see.’

‘Well, how old is this kid?’

‘Fifth grade.’

Starsia promptly told the alum that he was far too busy to recruit elementary-school students. But once the fifth-grader advanced to Lower Merion High School — best known as the school that produced Kobe Bryant — recruiting Christmas was no longer so far-fetched.

This was the kid, after all, who developed his game playing alongside two older brothers. The kid who’d stay up until 1 or 2 a.m. practicing his stick skills in his bedroom. The kid who’d ignore insults from opponents and parents.

‘He’d always get teased,’ said Christmas’ mother Margaret, who immigrated, along with her husband, from Trinidad. ‘My Johnny got teased. ‘Oh, you’re playing a white boys’ game,’ people would say.’

‘He became a marked man, and unfortunately, some racial comments would be made,’ Lower Merion lacrosse coach John Linehan said. ‘He also took some physical cheap shots. But he took it all in stride. We tried to prepare him for it.’

Christmas still faced a lingering problem after departing for Virginia. Starsia admits that Christmas’ collegiate success ruffles feathers in a few antiquated circles, mainly the old guard of lacrosse.

Yes, Jim Brown, an African-American, starred for the Syracuse lacrosse team in the mid-1950s, but his impact on the game’s diversity was fleeting — as Starsia described, ‘like a comet against the lacrosse sky.’

‘For the longest time,’ Starsia said, ‘lacrosse has existed in this old-boys’ network. Now, if there’s growth in new places, maybe in the inner city, that rocks the boat for some of the old patriarchs.’

Most, though, welcome Christmas’ arrival at the college level, particularly the sport’s governing body, U.S. Lacrosse, which constantly searches for ways to help the game expand and diversify.

In the past 10 years, U.S. Lacrosse’s membership has grown from roughly 7,000 to almost 100,000, and its developed programs in the South, on the West Coast and in urban areas.

Most opponents, too, understand and respect Christmas’ role.

At the Division I level, Virginia senior midfielder Chris Rotelli said, Christmas faces less blatant discrimination than he did in high school.

‘I think everyone respects his game enough so that won’t happen,’ Rotelli said, ‘and if anyone does talk (trash) to him, that’s unfortunate because he’ll be running right past you.’

Published on February 26, 2003 at 12:00 pm