The Lafayette

The Lafayette equestrian team hosted a show last Saturday, complete with raffles, ribbons, and many tears shed. After hearing their coach Kelly Poff’s grandson was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the team planned a home show Poff would never forget.
“I knew our hosted show was coming up,” club assistant Justine Perrotti ‘19 said. “I told Kelly [Poff] about a week after she heard the news that I would take lead host of the show so she didn’t have to worry as much.”
The team earned re...

0:01 left on the clock and 13,000 fans waiting with bated breath.
The snap. The dropback. The emphatic, game-clinching sack.
Scattered cheers became a full-on celebration as white jerseys met maroon-clad fans on the field at Goodman Stadium. Head coach John Garrett leapt into the air. The Lafayette Leopards won their first rivalry game since the big 150th at Yankee Stadium.
There had been blowouts, close games, and tough losses in other sports to the rival Mountain Hawks during the past few year...

The Lafayette field hockey team is off to a 1-1 start after splitting a pair of non-conference games. Last Friday they won their season opener at home against Virginia Commonwealth University 2-1, before losing a close game at 18th nationally ranked Syracuse after two overtimes on Monday. 
The home game was a “White Out” game, and quite a few fans had t-shirts given out by the Leopards Lair ahead of the game.
“I think the fact that there were so many people watching, especially student athletes,...

“It’s exciting. It’s nerve-wracking. It’s also some of my closest friends I was competing with.”
In Deer Valley, Utah, Erin Coyne placed 18th in the 2014 national championships of mogul freestyle skiing.
Coyne, now a senior at Lafayette, brings a lifetime of skiing experience to the Lafayette ski club. Before joining the club at college, she was competing in national championships in the mogul category of freestyle skiing. Three weekends ago, she won her third consecutive conference championship...

Amanda Grisanti grew up watching and playing hockey with her family. She was looking forward to continuing with the sport she loved at Lafayette, but was “bummed” when she found out that Lafayette had no ice hockey program for women at a club sports panel during Accepted Students’ Day. She was told that some had tried to start a team, but never followed through. Amanda immediately got to work in creating a team in her first semester at school. In her senior year, the team enters its second seaso...

In the women’s basketball team’s first game of the Patriot League Tournament in early March, senior guard Nia Holland drove to the basket to net the game-winning layup with three seconds remaining, giving the Leopards a hard-fought road win. Months before, during the preseason, she was told she would need to retire from the sport for medical reasons. 
Holland sustained a concussion in a preseason practice after a collision with a teammate. She sat out the rest of practice, feeling “shaken up” an...

After growing up in Nigeria with few opportunities, Mike Anekwe ’22 knew he “wanted to give back to an underprivileged community.” In March 2019, the Lafayette basketball player, 19, put his thoughts into a plan for action by starting the Anekwe Foundation, with the goal of growing “the game of basketball, not just in Nigeria but in Africa.”
Anekwe’s plan started with asking basketball players he knew if they had any basketball shoes they didn’t need anymore. Once he realized that the Student At...

Swimmers crowd the edge of the pool at the Weinstein Natatorium at practice, with many waiting for the cannon to sound off. Across the natatorium in the diving pool are just four divers, continuously practicing as diving coach Cindy O’Donnell occasionally shouts encouragement and coaching suggestions. None of the divers had pre-collegiate experience.
Seniors Isabella Capachietti and Jordan Thaler, junior Rachel Petzoldt, and sophomore Eden Ephraim make up the Lafayette diving team. O’Donnell sai...

After a 50-year career as a public address announcer for Lafayette, the iconic Jim Finnen can still be found at football and basketball home games. Finnen spent time at the Maroon Club ahead of the homecoming game last weekend, where he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999.
“The affiliation with Lafayette College has been a rich, rewarding experience that brought many friendships to my wife and myself,” Finnen said. “It was a most enjoyable career.”
Among his friends are Walt Manuel ‘66, w...

A “change in leadership.” That’s all the Lafayette athletics department said when they announced in December that veteran head coach Terri Dadio Campbell ‘92 would no longer lead the women’s volleyball team.

An investigation by The Lafayette has found, however, that Campbell—who coached several teams at colleges in Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania during a distinguished career—was in fact fired. And, for several years before her dismissal, athletes complained to the department that she was verbally abusive, mishandled injuries and humiliated players on what, some claimed, was a routine basis.

“I don’t think the freshmen notice any difference, I notice the attention is from the upperclassmen.”
“Yes sir, they’re horny as Hell!”
These two quotes appeared on the front page of The Lafayette from the first co-ed class at the college who discussed their reactions in an article by Nancy Baran
On September 18, 1970, The Lafayette published an issue including the editorial statement: “Blessedly, co-education is upon us. The endless carping and bitching of our predecessors has evidently paid of...

My’Kelya Dickerson ’19 was reluctant to participate in a free throw competition against her boyfriend, Phil Parham ’18, at the men’s basketball game last Saturday. Parham convinced her to compete, asking her to do so again and again in the days leading up to the game. Little did she know, he was gearing up to ask a bigger question all along.
During a media timeout in the game, with three minutes to go, Dickerson and Parham lined up at their respective free throw lines, at opposite ends of the co...