Denver’s American Indian community welcomed the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team to Colorado this week with burning sage, eagle feathers and a traditional song honoring heroes.
“You guys represent our warriors. You are our role models,” said Francis Sherwood, celebrating the world’s only indigenous team competing internationally as a sovereign nation for the World Lacrosse Championships in Denver.
The warm reception charged the 27-man team as they prepare to battle the world’s top players from Australia, Canada, England, Japan and the U.S. in the top tier of the nine-day competition played every four years.
The championship, which began Thursday night, is expected to draw about 100,000 spectators to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City through July 19, with 38 nations competing in 142 games. The Iroquois Nationals start tournament play against England on Friday.
For the Iroquois — six nations representing the indigenous people who once roamed New York, Quebec and Ontario — it’s a sacred game they were born to play.
“It’s our way of life. It’s deep in our culture. In our cradle board, we are given a wooden lacrosse stick. We grew up playing since we’ve been walking,” said Jeremy Thompson, 27, a Syracuse graduate from the Onandaga Nation who forged a lacrosse path for his three brothers and cousin.
The Thompson family — four brothers and a cousin on the Iroquois Nationals — are fueling a team that is poised to dominate. With 3-foot braids swinging below their helmets, the Thompsons — led by State University at Albany brothers Miles, 23, and Lyle, 21, and their 23-year-old cousin Ty — are bringing an instinctual, honed-since-birth style of box-lacrosse play to the international stage, promising to elevate the game their ancestors created.
The trio arguably comprises the three best young players in all of lacrosse. Miles and Lyle co-won the 2014 Tewaaraton Award, the Heisman Trophy of lacrosse, marking the first time the award has gone to an American Indian.
They chatter in their native tongue on the field, passing to each other without looking. At Albany, the Thompson triad was indomitable, accounting for 300 of Albany’s 456 points this spring. Coaches have described the Thompsons’ play as telepathic.
“We have such a sixth sense for each other … and that’s what makes us work so well together,” said Lyle, an attackman who this past season set the NCAA points record with 128.
The entire Iroquois team shares enviable chemistry. Its biggest advantage, said general manager and former team captain Gewas Schindler, is familiarity. There are many brothers and cousins on the team. Uncles, fathers, former players and team founder Oren Lyons are coaches.
Every team member has spent his life playing with one another in Canada’s boxlacrosse leagues before joining collegiate and professional ranks. In Finland in 2012, the Iroquois Nationals under-19 team beat the U.S. team for the first time. Lyle Thompson was captain of that team, and five other of those U-19 players are part of the Iroquois squad.
“It’s a very tight unit here, and it’s something special when you are clicking with someone on a different level,” Schindler said.
For the newcomers, Friday’s opener is simply a big game. For the veterans, there’s a fiery memory that could bolster their play.
In 2010, England refused to acknowledge Iroquois passports, and the team was unable to compete at the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester. The team, which many considered the best ever assembled, fell in international rankings, and the Federation of International Lacrosse stripped its ability to compete in the coveted top-flight blue division against powerhouses such as Canada and the U.S.
The Iroquois Nationals successfully appealed the federation’s ruling to regain blue division access in the 2014 world championships.
Schindler was captain in 2010 and still harbors the pain. But since assuming the general manager role in 2011, he said he has channeled his anger into “positive energy,” building a formidable team capable of toppling countries who recruit from populations several thousand times larger than the roughly 70,000-strong Iroquois Nation.
“I knew with all this young talent, if we really got together and focused, we could play at a high level,” Schindler said. “It’s something we are putting behind us.”
Schindler added his team will be “coming in with a lot of steam” against England.
Winning is important for the Thompsons, but not the ultimate goal. When Ty, Miles and Lyle opted for the State University at Albany in 2009 and 2010 over perennial American Indian magnet Syracuse University, it opened doors for other Division I schools. Soon, it wasn’t just Syracuse that landed American Indians.
Such as Zach Miller, a 19-year-old freshman phenom who ranked as a top player in the University of Denver’s remarkable season with record-breaking performances. Miller, although a youngster on the squad, said it takes mere seconds to fall in with the Iroquois Nationals.
“We’ve all known each other for so long … it’s such an honor to be out here playing with all of them,” said Miller, who’s from New York’s Seneca Nation. “We are getting to represent all our Native American people instead of just our local community.”
Carrying the weight of an entire people is a heavy burden for the Thompsons, but one they shoulder happily. Last month Miles, who recently signed with the Rochester Rattlers of Major League Lacrosse, went to a United National Indian Tribal Youth gathering in Oregon. More than 2,000 kids and parents went.
“It was an amazing feeling. Everyone was saying that lacrosse is growing out that way and that help for that came from Lyle and me,” Miles said. “That is something all my brothers have always said we wanted to do. We want to get more Native Americans to go use their talents but also embrace their ways, their roots.”
That’s the ultimate goal for the brothers, Lyle said.
“We are doing camps everywhere and trying to grow the game, our game, the best way we can,” Lyle said.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasonblevins
The amazing Thompsons
The 2014 season by Lyle and Miles Thompson at the University at Albany earned the pair the first shared Tewaaraton Award, marking the first time the award was won by a Native American. The duo pushed Albany to the top-ranked scoring offense in the NCAA’s Division I. They were the first Division I teammates to have 100-point seasons.
Both Thompsons scored in all 18 games they played this spring.
Lyle scored at least four points in each of Albany’s 18 games and more than six points in 16 of the 18 games. He scored an NCAA-record 128 points for the season.
Miles, Albany’s all-time points and goals leader, scored at least six points in 14 of Albany’s 18 games. He scored 119 points for the season – the second highest ever for a single season.
