Last Saturday, Donald Trump disinvited Stephen Curry, star of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, from visiting the White House. The announcement came after Curry announced he would not attend the trip to Washington due to his political disagreements with the president. Speculation soon arose about the prospects of other sports champions visiting the White House, especially since the University of North Carolina’s men’s basketball team also announced it couldn’t make the trip due to scheduling issues. Furthermore, Trump attacked NFL players who have followed in Colin Kaepernick’s footsteps by kneeling during the national anthem.
However, the Ohio Machine, the recent MLL Champions and Steinfeld Cup recipients, felt left out after they were excluded in the uninviting frenzy.
“We’ve worked so hard and played so well to get to the MLL and bring Ohio to the championship,” said one Machine player. “We feel we deserve the ability to not go to something.”
After being reminded that they wouldn’t be going to the White House either way, the player replied, “Well that’s just because we weren’t invited.”
There are still no reports that any player on the Ohio Machine roster is a Trump supporter, or even that anyone in the MLL is a Trump supporter. Some speculate that this is due to polarization within the athletic community creating a dominance of liberal voices and an unwillingness of conservative players to speak up. Others have argued that, as athletes in an underrepresented sport in the media, lacrosse players have become more sympathetic to racial and religious minorities who have been targeted by Trump.
The majority opinion, however, is that no MLL players have been reported to support Trump because of a complete lack of reporting on Major League Lacrosse in general. Said one sports reporter who asked to remain anonymous, “The Ohio who? Are you saying Ohio could have a team that matters even less than the Browns?”
But Kaepernick’s kneeling movement does not seem to have reached the MLL quite the same way it has reached other sports that nobody watches. Three players on the RIT water polo team had to be hospitalized this past week after kneeling for the duration of the national anthem. All three have since recovered and been released from the hospital.
It is unknown what the future holds for the president and the sports world, but some speculate that he is simply still upset about the collapse of the U.S. Football League in 1986. Trump owned the New Jersey Generals in that summertime competitor to the NFL. Relatedly, rumors have emerged that that Trump is interested in developing a competitor league to the MLL. Jared Kushner has been put in charge of the project.
