Adelphi men’s lacrosse won’t enter field to Trump speech during NCAA tournament
Adelphi University on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in Garden City. Credit: Howard Schnapp
President Donald Trump’s voice will not be played Saturday when the Adelphi men’s lacrosse team takes the field for its NCAA tournament game against Pace University, a school representative said, citing NCAA tournament policy as the reason.
“The music won’t be played Saturday,” Adelphi spokesman Kali Chan said. “We’re following mandated NCAA policy for playoff games.”
According to section 7.9 of the NCAA Division II men’s lacrosse tournament host manual, “no team provided warm-up music is permissible.” The rules state the host team must provide “neutral music.”
The team used a speech by President Trump as its entrance music during a previous contest, and a video showing the entrance has been viewed more than 730,000 times on Instagram.
The entrance, which includes the speech with a musical soundtrack, does not violate school policy, a school spokesman said.
The 39-second video posted Wednesday morning on Barstool Sports’ Instagram feed shows the Adelphi players lined up about to enter the field. The player at the front of the line is carrying an American flag. It is not clear from the video at which game the clip was shot.
Then, audio of a Trump speech begins.
“In all of our cities and all of our towns, I make this promise. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again.”
At this point the players start running onto the field.
The speech concludes, “God bless you, and good night. I love you.”
Sports teams on all levels often enter the field to music, although it is highly unusual for teams to enter to a speech by a president.
“The men’s lacrosse team’s regular-season pregame warm-up music is selected as a team and approved for use so long as they do not contain vulgarity or inappropriate subject matter,” Adelphi athletic director Danny McCabe said in a statement. “The songs they proposed and used this season meet those guidelines. As such, we are obliged to follow the policy.”
Men’s lacrosse coach Gordon Purdie added in a statement that the team “traditionally has chosen patriotic music” to accompany their entrance to the field.
“It was not intended to provoke or be taken as a political statement,” he said. “We’re sorry if anyone was offended.”
At least two players retweeted the Barstool Sports’ video.
Adelphi, which plays in Division II, is 14-3 this season and is the top seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Adelphi is a private university based in Garden City. Of the 41 players on its men’s lacrosse roster, 37 are from Long Island.
Jim Baumbach is an award-winning investigative reporter at Newsday, where he has worked since 1998. He spent two decades in the sports department, where he covered every professional team and league, including events such as the Super Bowl and World Series.
