High school team changes name from Redskins

New York high school team rids itself of Redskins nickname

At least one team is done with the name “Redskins.” And though it’s not the Washington NFL team, it still represents progress.

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A team from Lancaster, N.Y., which has gone by the name “Redskins” for years, was persuaded to change the name when a lacrosse team from neighboring Akron refused to play them. The Akron team has 16 Native American players from the local Towanda Seneca Nation.

After Akron announced they wouldn’t play Lancaster, two other local school districts followed suit. Following months of steady debate about the name, these decisions put Lancaster over the edge, and they passed a resolution ending the school’s use of the nickname.

The players for Akron deserve to be commended, as they used their voice to lend support to the school’s decision to refuse to play Lancaster.

Akron player Larson Sundown told USA Today that he’s proud of what he did in helping to get rid of an offensive name.

"“I like the idea that my kids will grow up with one less thing than I did,” Sundown tells USA TODAY Sports. “That’s awesome to know. My children, and my children’s children, will be able to just play, just have fun with the game, just run with it, and not have to worry about discrimination.”"

Well, that’s at least one team that has moved beyond its offensive nickname. But the most popular Redskins team still remains stubborn.

The NFL’s Washington Redskins have been the subject of heated debate recently, as the media and the public debates the merits of using a derogatory slur as a nickname. Native American terms are used throughout the major U.S. sports, (the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians, etc.); whether those names should be kept is another discussion, but rarely does a team use a nickname so offensive as “Redskins.”

Native American leaders have spoken out against the name, protests have been held, and many major sports publications have stopped using the term altogether when referring to the team, calling them instead “the Washington NFL team” or simply “Washington.” Prior to a Washington game, CBS national broadcaster Phil Simms announced that he would avoid use of the name in 2014. However, he went on to use it in that very game.

It’s a term with a bloody history: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” says the term originated when “the settlers gave a name to the mutilated and bloody corpses they left in the wake of scalp-hunts: redskins.”

However, team owner Daniel Snyder remains steadfast in his support for the name, repeatedly asserting that the name will “never” change, even in the face of all this controversy. He stubbornly insists that redskins is a “term of honor and respect” despite the public outcry and, you know, the actual definition of the term.

But Washington’s football team is hardly the only sports program still using the nickname; it’s merely the most prominent. Across the country, 57 schools use the nickname “Redskins.” However, including Lancaster, five have dropped the name in the past two years. Things seem to be progressing on that front; whether such progress will ever reach Dan Snyder is another question entirely.