I scored against the best goalkeeper in the world

“The selection in sports is pretty big at the VUB. The facilities are also pretty good. Only, it’s a pity that the VUB doesn’t have a lacrosse team. I’m pretty busy myself so I don’t want to start it up, but if somebody would find a coach and some motivated players, I’m all in”, laughs Lucas (22).

“I had a student athlete statute so lacrosse is appreciated in that way, like it should, but it is a shame that all the attention goes elsewhere. It is truly an amazing sport. The problem is that it isn’t that commercial and that’s why it stays under the radar. It is pretty difficult or even impossible to put lacrosse on the big screen like football and tennis.

Lacrosse originated in the United States and in Belgium the first lacrosse club only started in 2010. Now, there are eleven across the country. Via the boy scouts, I kind of rolled into it. There they showed us a compilation of the best goals and I thought it was so cool that I started doing it myself. That was back in 2013.

In 2018, we qualified with the Belgian national team for the Lacrosse World Cup in Israel. Great, but we had to pay for the whole trip and other expenses. We came in thirtieth out of fifty teams. I scored seven goals and assisted in seven. I even scored against the best goalkeeper in the world. Not bad eh?! I don’t think we will ever make money out of our sport, but if lacrosse could have the same statute as rugby in Belgium, I would already be a happy man.”

On the occasion of the VUB’s 50th anniversary, prof. dr. Martina Temmerman asked the students in her introductory course on journalism genres to make portraits of people on the VUB campus. The ‘snapshots’ resulting from the project Humans of the VUB offer a lovely cross section of life on our university campus in 2019/20.