Barrow's Memory Lives On Through Fall Tradition

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — For the University of Virginia men’s lacrosse team, the fall semester included practices, strength and conditioning sessions, scrimmages and team-building exercises.

The Cavaliers also found time, as they do every autumn, for a philanthropic initiative that’s become part of the fabric of the program. For the past 16 years, the team has staged the Will Barrow Memorial Flag Football Tournament, whose proceeds cover the costs of UVA’s HELP line and also help fund scholarships awarded annually by the Harlem Lacrosse organization to at-risk students.

The HELP line, affiliated with Madison House, is a student-run program staffed by anonymous volunteers trained to assist callers from UVA and the local community with a wide variety of issues, including mental health concerns.

Barrow, a standout defensive midfielder who lettered four times (2005-08) for the Wahoos, died by suicide in Charlottesville in November 2008. To honor Barrow’s memory, the Hoos held a flag football tournament the next year to raise money for the HELP line. Two of Barrow’s former teammates, Max Pomper and Mikey Thompson, spearheaded the inaugural event.

“Will was a very, very special person, a fun-loving, kind person that was a great teammate, a great friend, a great son, very well-respected on our team, and anyone that knew him had nothing but great things to say about Will,” Pomper recalled recently.

The college lacrosse world showed its support for the cause. Teams from North Carolina, Johns Hopkins and Stony Brook, among others, trekked to Charlottesville in the fall of 2009 to play flag football and raise awareness about mental health.

“From the start, people kind of rallied around the idea,” Pomper recalled.

Like Barrow, Pomper grew up on Long Island, N.Y., where each knew of the other’s prowess on the lacrosse field. Barrow enrolled at UVA in 2004. Pomper arrived on Grounds a year later, and they became close friends.

Pomper, who works in New York City, is delighted that the Will Barrow Memorial has become a fall tradition at UVA.

“I don't want to speak out of turn, but as I understand it, it’s become one of the biggest philanthropic events on Grounds,” Pomper said. “The kids on the team obviously do a great job of promoting it, and I think it's become a very fun event on the calendar for people to get together and remember Will, which is great.”

Hall of Fame coach Dom Starsia, who led the UVA program for 24 seasons (1993 to 2016), has spoken to Cavalier teams about Barrow several times, most recently in November.

Over the years, the men’s lacrosse program has had several “almost NFL-caliber athletes,” Starsia said. “Will was one of those guys. He was someone that could have probably played football at almost any school in the country, but he chose to come here to play lacrosse. So he was a superb athlete and a very good lacrosse player. He was a little bit quiet, but everybody liked him and everybody respected him. He was a captain for us in 2008, and then this thing happened and obviously shocked everybody.”

Starsia’s message to the current Cavaliers? “We all make mistakes,” he said, “and we take ownership and we bear the consequences and we hope that we get a little bit smarter [as a result]. Will made a mistake that he couldn't fix, and so what you guys are doing is making his legacy more than just about what happened to him at the end and making sure it lives on and on. And I just try to stress to them how important it is what they're doing.”

The piece “that we can be particularly proud about,” Starsia said, “is that we've taken some ownership of his legacy, and his legacy is that they're funding the mental health hotline. And then more recently, the contributions to Harlem Lacrosse are significant and truly important.”

Harlem Lacrosse was founded in 2008 by Simon Cataldo, who later graduated from the UVA School of Law. The organization helps inner-city middle school and high school students, many of whom go on to college.

“This money from the Will Barrow tournament, for these significant number of kids, fills in the gap between what they're receiving in financial aid and what the actual cost of attendance is,” Starsia said. “And so it's become vitally important, and it's a tribute to the Virginia lacrosse program and Will Barrow's memory that the lacrosse program has stepped up into this spot and performs a really important service, both on the mental-health hotline piece and the Harlem Lacrosse piece.”

Lars Tiffany, who succeeded Starsia as Virginia’s head coach, remembers watching No. 23 play. Barrow helped the Cavaliers cap an unbeaten season with an NCAA title in 2006.

“What a lacrosse player,” Tiffany said. “It was such a joy to watch him play with Virginia.”

Men’s lacrosse was one of the UVA programs that in September moved into the new Harrison Family Olympic Sports Center, and the team’s lounge is named for Barrow. Funding from the flag football tournament made that possible.

“And so they they've turned a horrific event into something that's left a positive impression on everybody,” Starsia said.

The Cavalier coaching staff plays no role in organizing the Will Barrow Memorial each year, Tiffany said. “This is truly a player-run event. They sit down and say, ‘Coach, when would be a good weekend to do Will Barrow? What's the practice schedule look like? What's November look like?’ ”

The 2025 tournament, held Nov. 15 at historic Lambeth Field, raised $41,580, said senior attackman Truitt Sunderland, who played a leading role in organizing and running the event. Some of that money came from the entry fees of the 12 teams that competed in eight-on-eight games, but most came from local businesses that annually support the fundraiser.

“The guys from the past have made it super easy for us,” Sunderland said. “There’s a Google spreadsheet, and it goes back years and years [with notes on] who they emailed, if they responded, how much they gave, and all that. And so it's essentially a blueprint of what they did, and I made sure to do that this year to make it easy for the guys next year.”

Tiffany said it’s “incredibly gratifying to see the legacy and tradition of the men's lacrosse program carried on, not by some old-timers forcing it down their throats, but by the young guys, by this generation. They ask to have someone come in and talk about Will Barrow probably every two years, whether that's [former UVA player and assistant coach] Hannon Wright or Dom Starsia. The older men say, ‘Hey, I heard this my first year. Can you bring that back? Can we bring someone back?’

“They love that connection. It makes the past tangible to be able to honor someone who was such an incredible human being. It’s rewarding to see the roots, the tradition, the legacy of the team carried through this current generation with nothing forced about it.”

Moreover, Tiffany said, their familiarity with Barrow’s story has made it easier for players to talk about mental health.

“This generation of men at Virginia Lacrosse understands how tremendously valuable it is,” Tiffany said, “and I give them credit for making themselves vulnerable to put their efforts around a topic, suicide, that's much easier left buried and unspoken.”

When he left UVA in 2010, Pomper didn't know what the future held for the Will Barrow Memorial. He's thrilled that the tournament remains a fixture on the fall calendar on Grounds.

“I think it's a testament to Will, for sure,” Pomper said, “but I also think it’s a function of having a great group of people attached to the UVA lacrosse program that want to remember Will and honor his legacy. I think lesser teams, lesser programs, might have let that thing die on the vine, but these guys have rallied behind it over the course of the last 15 or so years to make sure it gets done right every year. Every year, someone from the team calls me to ask questions about Will and how they can best honor him, which is really, really special and nice. I’m always very appreciative of that.”

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