When Anahalihs Doxtator was born, his grandfather Sim Elijah gave him a wooden lacrosse stick, as is tradition. Growing up on the Oneida reservation in Ontario, Canada, Doxtator began playing lacrosse at two years old.
Doxtator took to the game and carried his stick with him wherever he went. At age three, he was already playing up a level, with four and five year olds. When his mother tried to follow him into the dressing room to help him out, he replied, “It’s boys only, I got it.”
He spent much of his childhood playing lacrosse, a game created by the Haudenosaunee people thousands of years ago. He spent countless hours playing pickup in the backyard and developed a deep passion and respect for “the Creator’s game.”
But when he was a teenager, Doxtator had the game he loved ripped from him after a car accident left him in a coma for four days.
He had to learn how to walk again. He had to learn how to talk again. And he couldn’t play lacrosse for two years.
Years removed from the accident and fully recovered, Doxtator shined as a freshman for Onondaga Community College this spring. Despite having little experience with field lacrosse, Doxtator powered the Lazers to a National Junior College Athletic Association Region III championship before a loss in the NJCAA quarterfinals. Doxtator led the NJCAA in assists while placing fourth in points. A star at OCC and back home, friends and family said Doxtator has continued the Native American tradition at OCC and inspired boys on the reservation to follow in his footsteps.
Anahalihs Doxtator, wearing jersey number 45, shined as a freshman for Onondaga Community College this spring. Photo by Lee Nanticoke.
From the moment he was born, Doxtator’s family steeped him in the reservation’s tradition of lacrosse. His father and mother both played and so did his grandparents. Doxtator had an insatiable appetite for the game.
“He loves the game,” Elijah said. “That’s what he wanted to do every time he came over. ‘Let’s go out and throw the ball around.”
For his 10th birthday, Elijah helped coordinate a 20-minute catch session with Johnny Powless, a star in the National Lacrosse League. Powless and Doxtator stayed out on the field for two hours as the session progressed from passing and catching to behind-the-back passes.
Doxtator continued to play competitive field lacrosse from ages nine to 14. He often played pickup games on the reservation with friends including Damon Doxtator (no relation) and Greg Elijah-Brown. The trio made up OCC’s starting attack line this year.
He had just come back from winning a lacrosse tournament when suddenly, his lacrosse career seemed as though it might come to an end.
Doxtator was riding in a car with some of his cousins when his older cousin lost control of the vehicle as it slid into a ditch and turned over on its side.
Julie Kechego, Elijah-Brown’s mother and a paramedic, received “a call that will stick with me for forever.” By the time she and her partner arrived, the two other passengers in the car had made it out safely, but Doxtator was still in the car, unconscious.
When Kechego got on top of the overturned car and realized the person inside was Doxtator, she immediately got emotional, she said. Normally, the fire department would come and extricate Doxtator, but the truck wasn’t on its way yet.
“Time is brain,” Kechego said of brain injuries, so she and her partner had to get Doxtator out of the car as soon as possible.
Bringing him up through the car door wasn’t viable because they needed to protect his head and spine. So, Kechego and her partner worked to pry a piece of the already-shattered windshield off with a screwdriver and created an opening 12-18 inches wide to extract Doxtator from the car.
Grabbing his shoulders to protect him, Kechego and her partner pulled Doxtator out of the car through the windshield. On the way out, Kechego cut her arm on a shard of glass from the windshield. She still has the scar, and when she looks at it, it makes her think of Doxtator, Damon and Elijah-Brown.
Almost as soon as they got out of the car, the fire department and advanced paramedics arrived. They put him on a spinal board and took him to the hospital.
At the hospital, tests revealed two bruises on Doxtator’s brain as well as scratches. He was in a coma for four days.
That night, his family and friends visited him at the hospital. Damon, who views Doxtator as such a close friend that he’s practically a brother, struggled to look at his friend “all tubed up.” When Elijah got to the hospital, he was afraid Doxtator had already passed.
But Doxtator emerged from the coma and spent the following month at the hospital. His parents and Elijah didn’t leave for the duration of his stay. They got a room across the street and his mother only left Doxtator’s side to rest and shower, Elijah said.
Damon visited him at his bedside almost every day.
Doxtator, already small, lost 20 pounds in the hospital. Every morning, he would get up and walk 20 steps down the hall and back again or up a few stairs and back down -- “it was almost like a workout,” he said.
Lacrosse, the sport that had bonded Damon and Doxtator for their whole lives, was now in jeopardy for Doxtator. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to play again.
“The first day was really hard on me, I wanted to not play lacrosse anymore and I just wanted to be there with him but I know he would want me to go play lacrosse,” Damon said.
At Damon’s next lacrosse tournament, he hung Doxtator’s jersey on the bench. When he won the tournament’s MVP, he gave the trophy to Doxtator.
Despite his condition, Doxtator did everything he could to remain connected to lacrosse. He kept his stick with him in his hospital room and watched as much lacrosse as he could on TV. Elijah coordinated visits with multiple Native American NLL heroes that Doxtator looked up to.
Dan Dawson, the NLL’s second all-time leading scorer, spent a day in the hospital with Doxtator and the two have remained friends. Jeremy Thompson, Doxtator’s idol according to Elijah, spent a day at the hospital with Doxtator and gave him gloves and a jersey.
“That pushed me a lot, just because having them there made me want to play lacrosse again,” Doxtator said.
Once Doxtator left the hospital, he had to relearn how to do everything from talk to feed himself to walk, let alone play lacrosse. He underwent speech therapy and studied at the library with a tutor to reteach his brain to process information. For three months, he went to physical therapy twice a week.
When Doxtator got home, he immediately wanted to return to playing lacrosse. But at times, he was down on himself and doubted he would ever play again, Damon said.
“You play for the Creator. It’s medicine to our people so I think that medicine really helped him out,” Damon said.
A sports doctor came to his house, watched him play in his backyard, and cleared him to play catch.
The first time Elijjah and Doxtator played catch, Elijah was afraid he’d miss the ball and get injured again. But gradually, he improved. Doxtator got a personal trainer and worked with him three times a week to get his strength back.
After a year, Doxtator was improving ahead of schedule but still hadn’t been cleared for organized lacrosse. He began practicing with the London Blue Devils but could only do certain no-contact drills.
After two years, doctors finally cleared Doxtator for competitive lacrosse and he participated in the North American Indigenous Games.
Doxtator played hockey during the school year, but played pickup box lacrosse anytime he could, mostly during the summer. During summer nights, Doxtator and his friends on the reservation played pickup until it was too dark outside to see the ball.
“I couldn’t even see them but I could hear the ball hit the net,” Elijah said.
Anahalihs Doxtator, wearing jersey number 45, shined as a freshman for Onondaga Community College this spring. Photo by Lee Nanticoke.
During the summer of 2020, Doxtator, Damon and Elijah-Brown organized a league to keep track of the stats from their pickup games and held a draft, performed trades and held a championship.
The trio knew the connection between their lacrosse heroes and OCC, but didn’t know if they would play college lacrosse. As children, they watched their heroes at Six Nations games.
“Those are our heroes -- like Randy Staats and Austin Staats -- because they’re from Six Nations and they’re an hour from us. We got to watch them play in box. And then to see them play in field and where they got to after this place, it showed us that we can still move on through OCC,” Elijah-Brown said.
In addition to Randy and Austin Staats, Cody Jamieson and Thompson are other Native American players that starred at OCC and then went on to play at Syracuse University and professional leagues.
Because of their historical ties to the sport, Kechego said that Native Americans have a special duty to uphold lacrosse and what it stands for. And at OCC, the team has had a long tradition of Native American talent.
“It’s special to have those guys because the game is so important to them...it gives everybody a different perspective on lacrosse as a whole and what it can provide to you,” OCC’s former head coach Eric Miccio, who played with Thompson and his brother Jerome at OCC, said.
Because of OCC’s long tradition of success and Native American representation, it was an easy choice to extend his lacrosse career, Doxtator said.
But when he arrived on campus, Doxtator had to adjust -- he hadn’t played competitive field lacrosse in years and neither had Damon. Doxtator started the fall playing midfield before shifting to attack in the spring.
Compared to box lacrosse, field lacrosse has more players, a much larger field, larger goals, and a longer shot clock. Doxtator, like many box lacrosse players, has “fantastic” stick skills but didn’t know the structure and intricacies of the field game, OCC assistant Tim Desko said.
Whereas in box lacrosse the offense only gets 30 seconds to shoot, field lacrosse has an 80-second shot clock, so Doxtator said he had to adjust to be more patient and set up plays. In addition, he’s had to get better at using his non-dominant right hand, which he never used in box lacrosse.
Doxtator said he’s always thought of himself as an unselfish player -- something Elijah taught him. Doxtator is such a talented passer that he can throw his teammates open like a quarterback leading a receiver, OCC assistant Shane Crossett said.
“When offensive guys can do that it’s darn near impossible to stop,” Crossett said.
When he did shoot, he often found the back of the net. Throughout the season, Desko implored him to take more shots because of his high success rate. Of players with more than 15 shots, his shooting percentage of 56.4 led the team and he ranked second to Elijah-Brown with 31 goals.
Doxtator hopes that with his play this year, he can inspire more boys on the reservation to use lacrosse as a tool to get a better education, Elijah said. Doxtator said he wants to be a role model for boys on the reservation.
The reservation rallied behind Doxtator this season-- just as they did when he was injured years ago. Thanks partially to Doxtator’s play this year, there are high schoolers on the reservation who want to play for OCC next year, Elijah said.
“It’s a miracle that he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s a survivor,” Elijah said.
More on Syracuse.com
Pro soccer returns: What to know about the Syracuse Pulse before their home opener
2022 Winter Olympics: Which Upstate NY athletes are bringing home medals from Beijing?