At first only a printed version will be available. Soon, however, an eBook will be published.
Once the book is available for sale on Amazon, I intend to place a lot of vintage photos and old lacrosse news clippings, mainly from the 1970s, on my Instagram page. Keep checking, or send me a message below!
For readers who played or remembered the sport back in the 1970s, the book includes a lot of detailed accounts of USCLA Club lacrosse from 1970 to 1978, the years the author played.
Book Description
Within these pages is an historical account of lacrosse in the ’70s, combined with many stories about then-famous lacrosse people and teams. There are some humorous recollections, remembered and reported by the only social media of the time: many old photographs by the author, and from hundreds of saved, old news clippings.
Bond’s sons, Matthew and Adam, became the first two players from Florida to be members of a Johns Hopkins University lacrosse team. The latter half of the book covers being a father/coach, as well as a look at today’s game compared to the vintage days. The author’s grandson Greyson Bond, Matthew’s son, represents the third generation of lacrosse players in our family.
If you are into sports, have you ever wondered what it would be like to play on the best team in the country, or even in the world? To be a Super Bowl Champion, or win a World Series, or how about having your name on the Stanley Cup? Or be the world Number One in your sport? How about standing on the top podium with an Olympic Gold medal around your neck? I'm sure any kid who ever picked up a baseball, or a football or a hockey stick, at some point had visions of winning and being the best. Well, you know what? So did us kids who grew up with lacrosse sticks in our hands back in the 1960s and ’70s. We had the same kinds of fantasies, hopes and dreams.
We all knew about men like Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown, or Micky Mantle and Hank Aaron. Or how about Bill Russell and Jerry West? Those were among our sports heroes. For lacrosse players in that era, we also had our heroes, men we looked up to and wanted to play like. Players like Jimmy Lewis, Billy Morrill, Micky Webster and Buzzy Budnitz. Dick Finley, Buddy Beardmore, Jack Emmer, Jerry Schmidt, Hank Kaestner, Jerry Schnydman, Jack Heim, Homer Schwartz, Stan Fine, Tom Postel, and Ron Fraser.
The difference was, many of us who were into lacrosse actually got to play with our heroes. We got to play on some of the best teams in the country and at the highest echelon of lacrosse anywhere in the world. We actually got to participate at a “Super Bowl, or Stanley Cup, or World Series” equivalent in our sport; the very pinnacle of our game.
How many guys get to do that? We did! A whole lot of us back in the ’70s. I was just one of many. We delighted in the knowledge that when we were playing, it was among the very best players on the planet in our sport. What a memorable era it was, and a special privilege to be among the elite at something, and to be known in our lacrosse world as being the finest at our craft. It was a special time and place for the world of lacrosse.
With the hindsight of history, it’s easy to look back and say that lacrosse then was nothing like today, in terms of size, growth, popularity and certainly the talent involved. But you can make that same claim for any of the other sports I mentioned. They just happen to have longer histories of being immensely popular. Back in the ’70s, those of us playing were part of building a foundation that eventually became the immensely popular and widespread sporting phenomenon that it has become in the 21st century.
But, for me at least, it didn’t start out that way…far from it…
Dick Bond was a college lacrosse All-American at UMBC, where he was later the first inductee of the school’s All-Time Lacrosse team and also its first member of the UMBC Athletic Hall of Fame.
As a player in the United States Club Lacrosse Association (forerunner of professional field lacrosse) he won 4 National Championships in the 1970s and was League MVP in 1971.
When his sons began playing, he coached their high school team, Pine Crest School, winning the Florida State Championship in 1994. He was twice named Florida’s Coach of the Year, is in the Pine Crest Athletic Hall of Fame and the Florida Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
