University of Albany sophomore attack-man Tehoka Nanticoke, one of the biggest names entering the 2019 NCAA season, was reinstated after news broke early last Monday morning that he was “out indefinitely” as a result of an Instagram post that tagged a “stick-stringing company.”
A “minor violation” of NCAA rules took the UAlbany men’s lacrosse sophomore out of the Great Danes’ lineup for Saturday’s game which ended with a one-goal loss at Cornell. But by being reinstated, Nanticoke was to be on the field when the Great Danes faced UMass on Tuesday, March 5 at 3 p.m..
“The NCAA makes a lot of money off of athletes and they pretend to be student-athlete friendly,” said UAlbany head coach Scott Marr during his weekly appearance on “Big Board Sports” on ESPN Radio 104.5 The Team. “I don’t see any friendliness with suspending a kid indefinitely for making a mistake.”
Marr said that he was informed Friday morning that Nanticoke could not play Saturday because of the since-deleted post put up on Thursday in which he “tagged some third-rate stringing company on his Instagram” account.
Marrs sentiments became a part of a broader topic, as Jackson Parker from the Sideline Observer wrote: “If these players don’t have the freedom to post an Instagram caption, then do they have any freedom at all?”
In his high school years, Nanticoke earned an All-World Team and MVP at Attack with 22 goals and nine assists in the U19 World Championship in Vancouver in 2016. He was ranked the number one recruit in the Class of 2017 by Inside Lacrosse, while he notched 18 points in the 2017 Minto Cup, helped IMG Academy to a 19-1 record and earned himself a national ranking of #22 in the same year.
In 2018, while being on the Tewaaraton Trophy Watch List, he notched four goals and two assists in his NCAA Tournament debut vs. Richmond, following with three goals in NCAA Quarterfinal win vs. Denver and earned USILA and Inside Lacrosse All-America honours. He remains as a top player in the nation.
This makes him an incredibly influential and valuable athlete, and he is one of the most followed college lacrosse players in the country on Instagram holding almost 37,000 followers while also having 4,388 followers on Twitter.
However, a UAlbany athletic department spokesman confirmed Nanticoke had missed Saturday’s game because he committed a “minor NCAA violation related to social media,” but did not confirm who had flagged the social-media post as inappropriate.
Marr said in an interview with The Daily Gazette that he didn’t believe barring Nanticoke from playing was warranted as it was his first violation, but expressed happiness in the fact that the matter “got resolved quickly.”
