Will Farrell (not the comedian) started playing Lacrosse when he was five years old and has since stuck with the sport. In 2018, after his senior year at St. Johns in Washington D.C. he committed to Furman University. However, he had plans of doing a postgraduate year. He spent the year at Salisbury School in CT 2019, before enrolling at Furman.

Season 1

Will enrolled at Furman in the fall of 2019 immediately falling in love with the campus and its southern hospitality. He truly felt at home and enjoyed getting to know his teammates. All was going well…or it had seemed until March of 2020.

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Abrupt Ending 

The team got through 5 games in the Spring of 2020, and nobody could have predicted what happened next: in Mid-March the novel Coronavirus had made its way to the United States and was rapidly spreading. Faced with uncertainty, schools had no other choice but to shut down for the rest of the spring. Farrell and his teammates were sent home with the season all but over.

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Budget Cuts & Heartbreak

Farrell spent the rest of the semester at home in Washington D.C., isolated like the rest of us. Two months after Covid-19 made its way into the States, Furman announced major changes. Surprising many, including Farrell, the President of Furman had decided to discontinue Men's Lacrosse. This shocking and sudden news left Farrell broken. He had been on scholarship at Furman and had loved getting to know the guys on the team.

From May to September, Farrell didn't pick up one lacrosse stick. The sport he had loved had suddenly been taken away from him. It was time for decision making. Weeks later, Will talked with the Head Coach of Dickinson who had expressed interest in him and told him to take his time in decision making. Will couldn't say no. He headed back to Furman for the fall semester, since it was in person, and Dickinson was not, before heading to Dickinson in the spring of 2021.  

Related: Rate Dickinson College

A Happy Ending

Things weren't easy from the get-go at Dickinson, and for Farrell, it was an environmental change. Will preferred the South over Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but he greatly enjoyed his teammates and grew fond of the institution. He also found success on the field pretty quickly. Farrell maintained strong relationships with his teammates, professors, peers, and viewed head coach Dave Webster as a father figure. It was a rollercoaster of a collegiate experience for Farrell but he ended up exactly where he needed to be. 

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* Originally published on November 22, 2022, by Nicholas Nathanson