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There's a Spring in Sanders' step on lacrosse field

When the winds kick up off Lake Michigan and a hard rain pounds her face, Spring Sanders might spend an instant wondering what others have probably wondered about her: why didn't she fully follow in her mom's footsteps?

Sanders is a starting midfielder for Northwestern's nationally ranked lacrosse team (No. 9), which is playing Sunday in the NCAA quarterfinals at No. 1 Maryland.

Her mom, Anucha Browne Sanders, an executive with the NCAA who made headlines in 2007 for winning a sexual harassment lawsuit against the New York Knicks, also was an athlete at Northwestern. But she was a basketball superstar (in the mid-1980s) and the all-time leading scorer (2,307 points) in the program, having led the nation in scoring her senior year (30.5 ppg).

"My mom and dad (Roy) wanted to name me something that had to do with water. So, I guess when we're out practicing and those waves from Lake Michigan pick up and it starts raining sideways, that's what I get," Sanders, a junior, said with a laugh.

"That's when I think about how nice it would be to play an indoor sport like basketball."

Like her mom, whose picture is prominently displayed in Welsh-Ryan Arena as a "Wildcat Great," Sanders did play basketball. She grew up dribbling around the house, played in youth programs and on her high school team.

By then, Sanders was already more intrigued by lacrosse, a sport she didn't try until eighth grade.

"At first, I didn't want to play lacrosse because I didn't want to play a sport where you have to wear a skirt," laughed Sanders, who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. "But my little brother (Dakota) was playing lacrosse and I went to one of his practices with my mom and my mom kept saying, 'You should try this, you might like it.'

"I finally decided to try it and it was a lot of fun getting out there and running around. I loved the freedom of it. I was still playing AAU basketball up through my sophomore year in high school but it was getting so busy that it was kind of time for me to make a choice to go in one direction or another.

"I was having so much more fun with lacrosse. It was still new territory for me. I was still learning. The horizon seemed so much broader with lacrosse to see how good I could be."

Sanders cut back on her basketball commitments, moved to a more elite club lacrosse team and made plans to go to summer camp at NU, a program that has won seven NCAA titles since 2005.

She attended NU's camp three times before settling in Evanston as a student.

"I didn't have the best stick skills because I had just started playing lacrosse," Sanders said. "But I think the coaches (at Northwestern) saw that I had a lot of speed and that probably the best thing about me was my potential.

"I really loved what I saw at Northwestern because I saw coaches who could work with me and make me better."

Sanders also saw all of the wonderful opportunities that her mother and aunt saw. Browne Sanders, who grew up in Brooklyn, followed older sister Vicky to Northwestern. Browne Sanders met her husband at NU. They met in a campus gym pickup game. He grew up in Evanston and his parents still live there.

"My mom was constantly saying, 'You don't have to pick Northwestern just because I went there,' and I would laugh and say, 'That's not why I want to go there,'" Sanders said. "Northwestern has so much to offer, with the team and the school; and the part of Northwestern that I'm making my own is completely separate from the part of Northwestern that my mom made her own. I feel like I was meant to be here because it's the right fit for me.

"It is nice for us to have that in common. It's nice to know that my mom knows what it's like to be an athlete here."

Sanders takes her mom's standing in the NU athletic community in stride, and is more proud than competitive.

"I've never felt a pressure to be as good as my mom," Sanders said. "My mom left her mark at Northwestern, and in some kind of way, I'll try to leave mine."

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

• Follow Patricia on Twitter@babcockmcgraw.

Anucha Browne, who still owns the career scoring record at Northwestern, now returns to the university to cheer on her daughter, Spring Sanders, a star for NU's nationally ranked lacrosse team. Photo courtesy of Northwestern Athletics
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