Leave a Comment / By /

Lacrosse and 9/11: Remembering Our Own

Every September, the lacrosse community pauses to remember members of its own who were lost — or who became heroes — on September 11, 2001. Several of the men connected to that day played the game at the high school, college, or amateur level, and their stories have quietly become part of lacrosse lore. This year, with renewed national attention on Welles Crowther, we wanted to bring several of these stories together in one place, point you toward the people and organizations keeping their memories alive, and encourage our community to learn more.

Welles Crowther: “The Man in the Red Bandana”

The best-known of these stories belongs to Welles Crowther, a former Boston College lacrosse player and equities trader who was working on the 104th floor of the South Tower when the first plane hit. Rather than evacuate immediately, Crowther spent his final hour guiding trapped and injured coworkers to safety, reportedly helping save at least a dozen people before he died when the tower collapsed.

For eight months, Crowther’s family didn’t know exactly how their son had died. Then survivors began describing a young man who had led them out — his face covered by a red bandana his father had given him as a boy. That detail eventually connected the accounts to Welles, and “the man in the red bandana” became one of the enduring images of that day.

Crowther’s story has been the subject of the 2017 documentary Man in Red Bandana, narrated by Gwyneth Paltrow, which follows his parents’ search to learn what happened to their son and traces the ripple effects of his final act of courage. It’s available to stream on PBS and Prime Video, and is worth the hour.

His family also established the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust, which funds scholarships and youth programs, and runs the Red Bandanna Project, a social-emotional learning curriculum built around Crowther’s example that’s now used in classrooms and youth programs around the country. Boston College hosts the Red Bandanna Run each fall in his honor, drawing thousands of participants.

Eamon McEneaney: A Cornell Legend, Twice a Hero

Fewer people outside the lacrosse world know the story of Eamon McEneaney, but within it, he’s legendary. A three-time All-American attackman at Cornell in the mid-1970s, McEneaney helped lead the Big Red to back-to-back undefeated national championship seasons in 1976 and 1977, won the Enners Award as the sport’s top player, and was inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

What makes McEneaney’s story especially striking is that September 11 wasn’t the first time he responded to an attack on the World Trade Center. During the 1993 bombing, McEneaney — then a senior vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor — organized and led dozens of coworkers down more than 100 flights of smoke-filled stairwell to safety, reportedly helping as many as 65 people escape. Eight years later, on 9/11, McEneaney was among the Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed when the North Tower collapsed.

His story carries fresh resonance today. After McEneaney helped Cornell to that 1977 title, the program went 48 years without another national championship — until May 2025, when the Big Red finally broke through, beating Maryland at Gillette Stadium for their first title since McEneaney’s playing days. It was Cornell’s first NCAA championship in any sport since 1977, and it made McEneaney’s legacy feel current again for a new generation of Big Red fans and players.

Outside of athletics, McEneaney was also a published poet; a collection of his work was released posthumously. Cornell’s lacrosse program still honors him, and the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Museum maintains a memorial exhibit that includes a piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center. USA Lacrosse’s Sparks, Maryland headquarters also includes a dedicated 9/11 Memorial honoring the nearly 70 members of the lacrosse community who died that day.

Others From the Lacrosse Community We Lost

Crowther and McEneaney’s stories are the most widely told, but they represent a much larger group of players, coaches, and lacrosse families connected to that day. These are just some of the many members of our community we lost — there are dozens more whose stories deserve to be known, and we’d encourage you to read the fuller lists linked below.

  • Sean O’Neill, who played lacrosse at Rye High School in New York, was an equities trader at Cantor Fitzgerald and was expecting his first child at the time of his death.
  • Peter O’Neill Jr., a Holy Trinity High School and Bentley College lacrosse player, worked at Sandler O’Neill & Partners and also served as a volunteer firefighter.
  • Thomas Haskell, a lacrosse player at Seaford High School and later at St. John’s, was an FDNY battalion chief who led his company into the South Tower and helped evacuate thousands before it collapsed.
  • Timothy Haskell, Thomas’s younger brother and also a Seaford lacrosse player, was an FDNY firefighter with Squad 18 who died roughly thirty minutes after his brother, in the tower’s collapse.
  • Michael Healy, a youth lacrosse coach in Patchogue and Massapequa, New York, was an 18-year FDNY veteran and lieutenant with Rescue Squad 41.
  • Ryan Kohart, a four-year letterman and team captain for the University of North Carolina men’s lacrosse team, was a stock trader at Cantor Fitzgerald.
  • Peter Ortale, a team captain and All-ACC standout for Duke’s lacrosse program in the mid-1980s, was a bond broker at Euro Brokers. He was last seen helping others toward a stairwell during the evacuation. His college teammates and friends went on to establish the Peter Ortale Memorial Scholarship, still awarded to a Duke lacrosse player each year.
  • John and Joseph Vigiano, brothers who both played lacrosse at Deer Park High School on Long Island, died together on 9/11 — John as an FDNY firefighter with Ladder 132 and Joseph as an NYPD detective with Emergency Service Unit Truck 2. Joseph was a posthumous recipient of the NYPD Medal of Honor.
  • Ron Kloepher, who founded the NYPD Lacrosse Club, was an NYPD officer with Emergency Service Unit Truck 7 and a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient.
  • Glen Wilkinson, a Hofstra lacrosse alum, was an FDNY lieutenant with Engine 238 and received the Congressional Medal of Valor.
  • Chris Quackenbush, a University of North Carolina lacrosse alum, coached youth lacrosse in Manhasset, New York, and worked at Sandler O’Neill & Partners.
  • John Schroeder, a national champion at Princeton, worked as an equity trader at Fred Alger & Company.
  • Glenn Wall, a 1984 national champion at Johns Hopkins, was a senior vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald.

This is still only a partial list. The Long Island Metro Lacrosse Foundation maintains a fuller memorial page naming dozens of players, coaches, and lacrosse-community members lost that day — including several who later died of 9/11-related illness — and USA Lacrosse’s “Lacrosse Remembers” profiles many of the same stories in greater depth. Duke’s athletics department has also written about Peter Ortale and fellow alumnus Rob Lenoir, two Blue Devils lost that day.

Where to Learn More

Nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001. The names above are just some of the many members of the lacrosse community we lost that day — teammates, coaches, captains, and friends — and their stories are a small window into how deeply that day touched even a single sport. We share them here in tribute, so that their memories live on, and so our community keeps telling them.

Have another story from the lacrosse community connected to 9/11 that belongs here? Reach out and let us know — we’d like to keep this list growing.

Scroll to Top