Heaven sent
Blackhawks football program is an answer to prayers for many in the Lummi community.

Art Solomon sports his Lummi Blackhawks sweatshirt while watching Jack Horn mend his net. The two were fishing off Lummi Shore Drive earlier this fall.

Ray Jefferson grabs a pass from Dustin Tom and cuts through the opposing defenders, looking for a seam to the end zone. “Go Grandson!” Marie Roberts cries from the sideline. “Go Grandson!” Roberts is a Lummi elder and a fixture at Blackhawk football games. She shouts encouragement to Jefferson, her biological grandson, and to her grandnephews and to the sons of her “winter” daughters — women her own daughter’s age who have boys on the team and to whom she is a mother figure. “I’m not the only elder who sits there,” Roberts says. “I’m just the most vocal.”

To Roberts and many others at Lummi, the Blackhawk football team is a blessing. The games offer a place for the community to gather and celebrate a family-oriented, healthy activity; there’s no alcohol, no drugs, no violence (except for what’s restricted to the playing field). The players showcase the athleticism and skill of Lummi youth — not just to their fans, but also to opponents from the Olympic Peninsula to the Palouse — and they’re role models to the younger tribal members, many of whom idolize them.

“A lot of grandparents, a lot of elders have been praying for this to come into our community, and thank God it has come,” Roberts says. “They have been praying that with some generation the cycle will be broken, and I think we’re heading to that. It’s not going to be fixed in a year, it’s not going to be fixed in maybe 10 years, but maybe the next generation, or the generation after that, the abuse, the dysfunction, the cycle will be broken.”

Marie Roberts weathers the wind and rain at Lopez on Oct. 4 to cheer on the Blackhawks. The Lummi elder rarely misses a game, home or away.

Pauline Hoskins is Marie’s daughter, and senior wide receiver Ray Jefferson is the oldest of her five sons. She graduated from Ferndale High School and for years watched as Lummi boys struggled for playing time on her alma mater’s team (Lummi youth can attend Ferndale schools). It was tough for them to crack the lineup, though, because Ferndale is one of the top high school football programs in the state. “We’d always go to a Ferndale game and maybe see one of our boys in for one play,” she says. “That’s real depressing.” Hoskins points to another barrier Lummi boys confront when they leave the reservation. “Racism is there and I don’t think it will ever die, and that’s a sad thing,” she says. “They live where we live, and we live where they live and there’s still that boundary between the two.”

Lummi High School began playing football in 2002, and Jim Sandusky took over the program the following year, quickly turning it into a state power in the B-8 classification. Hoskins has witnessed the evolution of Blackhawk football over the past few years and expects to be watching much more of it in the future. Son Deion Hoskins plays for the Bellingham Regulators select team and is a rabid Blackhawks fan. All he wanted last week for his 13th birthday was to travel out to the Olympic Peninsula for Lummi’s game against Crescent. His parents reminded him that he would miss his Regulators game and told him he needed to stay home and play. Hank Hoskins, 10, and Stanford Hoskins, 8, are regulars at Blackhawk games, where they can be seen running and tackling each other along the sidelines and on the field at halftime. Paul Jefferson, 16, hasn’t wanted to play in Ray’s shadow but might go out for the team next year after his older brother graduates. “To see the expectation of all the kids — ‘I want to be a Blackhawk’ — it’s made a huge big difference in my boys,” Hoskins says.

Stanford Hoskins, 8, breaks the grasp of brother Hank, 10, while playing their own two-man game on the sideline of Lummi's game against Lopez.

Ray Jefferson (left) turned out for the Ferndale football team as a sophomore but quickly realized he wasn’t going to see much playing time, and he says he grew tired of “kids talking shit about Indians behind my back in the hallways.” He and his parents reached an agreement: He could transfer from Ferndale to Lummi, but only if he would pursue his AA degree while there; that way he would have a better chance of going to college. Today, he is a co-captain of the Blackhawks, a Running Start student and one of Dustin Tom’s favorite targets. “Lummi football is everything to me right now,” he says. “It’s the whole reason I’m in Running Start. The whole reason I’m at Lummi is for sports.” He says he hears his grandmother cheering for him, and he knows that when she shouts “Grandson!” she’s also rooting for his cousins Jeremy and Devin Roberts, and longtime buddies such as Alex, Lumpy, Dustin, Gale and Murphy. “It means a lot to us,” he says. “For me it does, to have my grandmother there. She helped raise me because my father left when I was 1. She always had her home open. She helped raise me and my brother.”

Marie Roberts is the Lummi community cook, preparing meals for funerals, weddings, all kinds of events. She knows just about everyone on the reservation, and is grandmother to many of the boys, whether by blood or in what she terms a “cultural” way. She is 62 years old and a tribal elder, providing advice and information on Lummi culture, history and other issues. She also nurtures those who need it. “I think that’s my biggest role,” she says. “I do a lot of nurturing.” That includes supporting Lummi’s youth. “Our community is in a mode of improving activities with their children,” she explains. “That’s changed even with the basketball, the volleyball team. It’s become not just the children, the parents, the grandparents, it’s the whole community.”

Roberts credits Sandusky for much of the change, and she says she thanks his wife, Tami, every opportunity she gets for sharing him. “I love to encourage ‘Sandman’ because he has brought so much to our community, such a pride to our community,” she says. “He’s such a dedicated man, I just love him.” Sandusky also has injected an element of spirituality into the program, gathering his players together in prayer on the field after each game. Roberts appreciates that, too. “He’s brought God, Jesus, the Creator, that part into our community,” she says. “He has made it acceptable for our young people to pray.” This season the Blackhawks’ opponents have been joining them in the prayer. “It’s like a pebble in the water,” Roberts says. “It has a ripple effect, not just in our community but in other communities.”

Crescent Loggers join Lummi Blackhawks in prayer following their Oct. 11 game.

Sandusky, a veteran of the National Football League and the Canadian Football League, says prayer always has been part of the teams he’s played for, and he says it seemed only natural to introduce it to the Blackhawks. They pray for safety, to play hard and to have fun, and for safe travels home; they end by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “It’s pretty general,” he says, “but it makes you realize there’s more to the game.” Sandusky talked to the Highland Christian coach before the season opener this year and asked if his team would like to join the Blackhawks in prayer after the game. They did, and when Lummi played Tri-Cities Prep, a Catholic school, the following week some of the Blackhawks invited the Jaguars to join their prayer. “Those guys have done that on their own,” Sandusky says. “That’s one of my most proud things, that they took the initiative to do that.”

Prayers offered by the Blackhawks — such are the moments that are prayers answered for Marie Roberts and many other Lummis. “You know what,” Roberts says, “it’s the most wonderful thing in my lifetime that I’m able to see this.”