Alfie Jacques Award honors 3 lacrosse ambassadors’ ongoing contributions
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For most of Friday night, when Dom Starsia spoke, he never broke eye contact.
People walked past. Conversations swirled through the room. The third annual Alfie Jacques Ambassador Award Dinner carried on around him, but Starsia stayed focused, talking about the game that consumed his life for over five decades.
Then, one of last year’s winners, Roy Simmons Jr., rolled by in his wheelchair. Starsia’s eyes panned. In his left peripheral, he glimpsed the man he chased for years, the coach whose 1971-98 Syracuse teams set the standard Starsia sought at Brown and Virginia.
Now, Starsia has finally caught up to Simmons. Because on Friday night at Bellevue Country Club, he joined his old foe as an Alfie Jacques Ambassador Award recipient, honored in legendary stickmaker Alfie Jacques’ name three years after his death. Starsia, a four-time national champion head coach, was honored alongside Michael Kennedy, the Irish lacrosse leader who contributed to the decision to surrender Ireland’s spot in the 2022 World Games so the Haudenosaunee Nationals could compete.
Mike Kanatakeron Mitchell, a Haudenosaunee ambassador who preserved lacrosse’s cultural roots, was also recognized. The three joined Simmons, Oren Lyons and Sid Jamieson as honorees recognized for contributions to the game and its communities.
At Brown, Starsia watched the Orange sit atop men’s lacrosse. When he arrived at Virginia in 1992, his first request to athletic director Jim Copeland was to get Syracuse on the schedule.
“They were the King of the Hill,” Starsia told The Daily Orange.
The teams met seven times during the coaches’ tenures. SU led the series 4-3, taking nail-biting victories like a 22-21 thriller at the Carrier Dome in 1997 and an 18-17 win in Charlottesville in 1998.
“When we get together, we talk about what we did once upon a time,” Simmons told The D.O.
The Alfie Jacques Award during the award ceremony Friday. The third annual ambassador awards honored three contributors in legendary stickmaker Alfie Jacques’ name three years after his death. Cole Christopher | Staff Photographer
Starsia remembers the night before Virginia’s 17-15 win in 1996. Doug Knight, one of his best players and that season’s National Player of the Year, broke the plastic off his stick with five minutes left in practice. Starsia handed Knight his own stick to finish the session and “didn’t sleep that night” because his player wasn’t using a familiar stick. Starsia watched as Knight ended with eight goals and the victory using a teammate’s stick.
Starsia couldn’t help but chuckle, recalling how Simmons approached him after the game.
“Who the hell was that number seven?” he recalled Simmons asking.
But Starsia’s connection to the game started long before Virginia. He was a freshman at Brown in 1970 when his football teammate, Dave White, suggested he try lacrosse. Starsia hadn’t played or seen a game and still isn’t sure why he agreed. It turns out he just needed to pick up a stick.
“I felt like this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing,” Starsia said in his speech. “The feeling of the wood in my hands was magical.”
Starsia kept his stick propped on the wall outside the football locker room, never letting its hickory see a locker’s darkness. He said he found it spiritual, taking a ball bag to the field by himself Sunday mornings. White introduced Starsia to the game’s Indigenous roots and brought him to St. Regis, where Starsia played box lacrosse.
White asked his coach Peter Burns to play Starsia after Starsia made the trip to watch White. Starsia did under an alias: “Ralph Cree” — a name that drew laughter from the crowd Friday night. The teammates teased Starsia about the name, but the experience stuck with him. In 1975, Starsia played professionally for the Boston Bolts in the short-lived National Lacrosse League.
Over 50 years later, that first stick led Starsia to an award named after one of lacrosse’s most prominent stickmakers, Jacques.
Kennedy’s path to the award began similarly. His older brother’s best friend handed him his first stick in middle school in Westchester County. Kennedy later captained Ireland’s national team from 2005-10. When he retired from international play, his teammates gave him a stick made by Jacques with Kennedy’s name, the Irish flag and his No. 16 engraved on it.
When Kennedy walked to the stage, Catherine Conway, who helped facilitate Ireland’s decision to yield its 2022 World Games spot, embraced him. Kennedy thanked her for placing the microphone in its holder. His hands, he said, might shake. When Kennedy described the stick, his voice nearly gave way. He still keeps it next to his desk at home, and at Friday’s dinner, he kept it in his car outside.
“It all begins with the stick,” Kennedy said in his speech. “My journey of lacrosse begins with the stick.”
It also became part of Kennedy’s Haudenosaunee connection. In 2022, Ireland was scheduled to compete at the World Games in Birmingham, Alabama. The Haudenosaunee Nationals weren’t included. After discussions with coaches, players and administrators, Ireland voluntarily rescinded its spot so the Haudenosaunee could compete. Kennedy called it a responsibility to the game and said he doesn’t regret it. With lacrosse set to return to the 2028 Olympics, questions have resurfaced.
“Is the sport an Olympic sport?” Kennedy asked. “If it is an Olympic sport, and the Haudenosaunee get excluded, is that really good for the sport?”
Mitchell has spent decades working toward the same recognition, growing up around lacrosse. His parents were hickory stickmakers, and he worked in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne along the U.S.-Canada border. It included serving as Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, co-founding the North American Indian Traveling College and establishing the Akwesasne Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
Mike Kanatakeron Mitchell speaks at the Alfie Jacques Ambassador Awards. Mitchell, a Haudenosaunee ambassador who preserved lacrosse’s cultural roots, was recognized as one of three recipients of the award Friday. Cole Christopher | Staff Photographer
He moved from lacrosse’s connection to language and ceremony to the Haudenosaunee Nationals’ struggles crossing borders and getting through airports. Still, the team kept playing. Mitchell recalled how lacrosse once settled nations’ differences. He said the sport’s meaning was diminished when it separated from those roots. Now, he wants it to return to them.
“Our people invented the game,” Mitchell said.
For the Haudenosaunee, Mitchell explained, the stick is part of life from beginning to end. His introduction video noted tradition, placing miniature wooden sticks in children’s cribs at birth and with them at death.
Robert Carpenter, who helped establish the award after Jacques died in 2023, said that was part of why the committee chose this year’s recipients. Carpenter said Jacques spent his life bringing people together through lacrosse. He traveled with Haudenosaunee teams, taught people about the game and its history and made wooden sticks for players around the world.
“There’s nobody like (Jacques),” Carpenter, the founder of Inside Lacrosse, said. “There will never be another person like him.”
The award was created to keep that work going. Recipients received a wooden stick made by Jack Johnson, a Jacques mentee who carried on his craft. Mitchell’s stick was embroidered with a Hiawatha Belt design, Kennedy’s had the Irish flag and Starsia’s carried Brown’s logo.
“We all have a responsibility to continue that cycle that Alfie has so generously passed on to us,” Kennedy said, wrapping up his speech.
At the end of the night, Starsia, Kennedy and Mitchell gathered with Simmons, Lyons and Jamieson for a photo. The three previous recipients stood alongside this year’s honorees.
Starsia’s eyes spent much of the night following the game’s past. Now, he stands alongside its present, holding the Brown-logoed stick Johnson made for him.
“If you treat this game with respect, it can be your friend for a long time,” Starsia said.
