Following the end of a better-than-average season, former members of the Virginia State University women’s lacrosse team are exposing the alleged abuse they suffered while on the team. Former players are claiming the season was filled with bullying, harassment, and intimidation from current head coach Ashley Lawerence and her father, Thomas Lawrence, who is the assistant coach. Players also accused athletic director Peggy Davis of misconduct.
Parents of the players met with HBCU Sports to give insight on what their daughters had experienced.
“My daughter wanted to be at an HBCU after being at a predominately white boarding school,” a parent of a player told HBCU Sports. “We loved the fact this would be the inaugural team. I was happy with what we saw, and I told Coach (Ashley) Lawrence, ‘I’m entrusting you with my precious cargo.’
“And I thought we were on the same page, but my daughter received treatment to the point she doesn’t want to play lacrosse anymore, and she’s been playing since the fifth grade. That’s very disheartening to have that taken from you.”
Prior to coming to Virginia State in 2022, Lawrence was a high school coach and played lacrosse at Howard University. Both players and parents say that Lawrence is a gaslighter who “lacked the experience to run a collegiate team and created a poor program culture.”
“She’s really good at gaslighting. We had no structure. She was getting practice videos off of Instagram,” claimed a player of Lawrence’s coaching methods. “We were crying every day after practice. And now she’s trying to wipe out the entire class so no one can know what she did the first year.”
One player said she came to Lawrence about being assaulted by another player, and Lawrence did nothing. Following the incident, the player who was attacked pressed charges against her teammate, but she later filed a counterclaim. To comply with Virginia State’s student code of conduct, both players were removed from campus. Derrick Terry, executive director of Edvocare, was asked by the victim's family to act as an advocate. He did, however, run against opposition from both the Virginia State administration and the athletic department.
“I brought it to [Virginia State’s] attention on three separate occasions to mediate this, but I was ignored, and the parents were ignored,” Terry told HBCU Sports. “The only reason we eventually got a meeting was because a state delegate, Rozia A. Henson Jr., got involved, but [the situation] still wasn’t resolved.”
One player claims that when the team brought the allegation of mistreatment to Davis, she told them to “stop complaining about Lawrence because she was tired of hearing about it” while suggesting they leave the team if they didn’t like the way they were being treated. The player also claims that Davis said that “Coach Lawrence can do anything she wants to you as long as it's legal.” Following a final incident with Lawerence, one player says all her teammates are currently in therapy.
“In spite of all the stuff I was going through, we had this end-of-the-season meeting, and she told me I was a terrible player, I was no longer deserving of the money she promised,” she said. “My mom called and asked why, and [Lawrence] said, ‘Just to be punitive.’ It was hard for me to wake up in the morning, let alone think about lacrosse. I put out what I put out on the field, and she didn’t care. That meant nothing to her. All of my teammates are in therapy.”
Several players are no longer on the team; some have even transferred. Many parents want to use this experience as a learning experience for others.
“For my daughter’s health, we had to walk away,” a parent said. “She did not have support there, and it was not the experience that I hoped for her to have. I am grateful for another school to pick her up, but this ruined lacrosse for a lot of girls. That’s not any impact any Black woman should have on young Black girls. This is not Black excellence at all.”
HBCU Sports contacted Ashley Lawrence, Peggy Davis, and Virginia State President Makola Abdullah, but received no responses.
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