Syracuse.com
by Lindsay Kramer
Syracuse, N.Y. — Former Syracuse lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Jr. was honored when the Alfie Jacques Ambassador Award board contacted him with the news that he had been named the second winner of the newly annual tribute.
Simmons had just one request, however. He would only accept it if his friend of 70 years, Iroquois Nationals lacrosse legend Oren Lyons, was honored with him.
It was the perfect response. The award, named after the well-known Onondaga stickmaker, was created to honor figures who shared Jacques’ love of the sport and commitment to fostering its growth.
Lyons, 95, and Simmons, 90, have spent their life reveling in their passion for lacrosse and sharing it with as many followers as possible. If Simmons was going to get this year’s spotlight, he wanted to make sure it was expanded to include the man he’s known and admired all the way back to their days as teammates at Syracuse.
“I’ve spent most of my life with Oren. He and I have spent 70, 75 years together, and we have a lot of similar likes and no dislikes,” Simmons said. “After he got so international on me [coaching], we weren’t right in the same close loop, but we’re always friends. We find one another every now and then.”
Friday night was another one of those occasions.
Both Simmons and Lyons were celebrated as winners of the award named after their close friend, who died in 2023. They were the guests of honor at a banquet held at Bellevue Country Club.
“All the awards I’ve been given, never had a close friend connected with it,” Simmons said. “To have him be a friend of mine and to get an award in his honor, I spent so much time with him and revered him. So it’s a special honor, something you never expect.”
Committee member Bob Carpenter, who helped organize the event, said his group was already planning to honor Lyons in some fashion when Simmons asked that he be included on Friday. Regardless of what other tribute the committee had planned, Lyons enjoyed a special perspective on the Jacques Award.
“I’m just kind of overwhelmed by the whole thing. Slug [Simmons’ nickname is Slugger] and I have been together for a long, long time,” Lyons said. “We get awards all over the place, but this particular one is coming from our folks. It means a lot.”
Simmons and Lyons were teammates on the 1957 SU team. Both were great players, and each went on to long and successful careers as coaches and lacrosse ambassadors. But perhaps one of Lyons’ greatest contributions to lacrosse was the path he set Simmons upon.
Lyons urged Simmons to step back from a lacrosse-centric view of life and major in fine arts. It was important, Lyons said, to become a well-rounded person and appreciate all types of beauty in the world. Lyons expressed his perspective as an illustrator. Simmons became a talented collagist.
“That was very important to me,” Simmons said. “It was a great part of my life. I spent a lot of time in the fine arts field, and I had a studio where I did fine arts, and then I had a field where I coached. Oren did a lot of coaching in his day. He was a very fine artist, an illustrator and a painter.”
That free-flowing approach spilled over into lacrosse. Simmons encouraged a wide-open style, crafting some of the most entertaining and creative teams in the history of the sport.
“That’s a real bond [between Simmons and Lyons]. They understand the finer things about what it takes to be an artist. Artistic things come out in them and how they do other things. They’re not afraid to be out there,” said former Bucknell coach Sid Jamieson, the 2024 Jacques award winner.
“I think the art connection is really the strongest part of it. They really connect on that level,” said Roy Simmons III, Simmons Jr.’s son. “Alfie used to come over to the house, and they’d talk for hours and hours about his craft and his craft and not about X’s and Os and wins and losses. It was all about the cultural part of the game. And that’s what really is the deepest part of all of this.”
Justin Giles, a committee member and a former player at Virginia, said Lyons and Simmons have the knack of relating to all lacrosse fans as well as they do to each other.
“They’re humble, they’re genuinely smiling, too,” Giles said. “I was thinking about their interactions. They’re open to being approached. They don’t have this aura of unapproachability. That goes back to the character again, another reason why they’re able to relate to players, fans and coaches. I think they have that humble quality, which again is another thing that you’re just kind of born with.”
So in a sense, on a night when Lyons and Simmons were the ones slated to be on the receiving end of a tribute, their examples continued to be a way of giving back as well.