Leveling the Playing Field

Although she couldn’t have known it then, Samantha Ekstrand’s life began to change forever during her Third Form spring, when ski racing season ended and all her friends “seemed to be trying” lacrosse. Ekstrand found a stick and began playing around with the ball. She made the junior varsity that year and by Fifth Form spring had become good enough to snag the last spot on Heather Crutchfield’s varsity roster.

 

“And I will tell you that that woman, and that experience, changed the trajectory of my life,” says Ekstrand, who uses words like “magnetic,” “vivacious,” and “ultra-competitive” to describe the charismatic coach and associate dean of Admission, who had established a successful track record at St. Paul’s School and created a tradition of pride that made Ekstrand and her teammates feel like they belonged to something special. A defender, Ekstrand didn’t see much playing time that first year, but her Sixth Form year, she was a starter and knew she wanted lacrosse to continue to be part of her life. Unrecruited but “fully prepared” to play at her college of choice, Dartmouth, she walked on and made the team — in no small part due to Crutchfield’s national reputation for mentoring young women who could play the game.

 

Ekstrand says it was at Dartmouth that she learned the true meaning of hard work and discipline. “I was totally in over my head,” she admits. “The intensity and commitment were eye opening. Every day, you go to classes, do your homework, go over to practice, and then lift weights until midnight. The next day, you do it all again.” As she discovered, traveling five hours on a bus and standing on the sideline during a spring snowstorm will either make you or break you.

 

It made Ekstrand, who was hooked by the camaraderie and managed the discipline side of things well enough to be named an Academic All-American in her senior year.

 

After graduating with a degree in history and government, Ekstrand pulled another “double major” in graduate school, earning a law degree along with a master’s degree in history at Duke. After a stint teaching and coaching college lacrosse, Ekstrand devoted herself to raising her family — she has five children, including triplets — as well as working at Ekstrand & Ekstrand LLP, the Durham, North Carolina, law firm she and her husband, Robert, started in 2002. Initially focused on the operational side of the firm, she soon developed a niche at the intersection of law and sports that put her on the path to fulfilling her professional purpose: advocating for equitable support and opportunity for women in sports, a role that includes working with college coaches on contract negotiations, investigations, and separation agreements, among other things.

 

Today, Ekstrand serves as an adviser to several professional associations for college coaches, including women’s lacrosse, field hockey, ice hockey, soccer, and softball. “In this role, I am able to advocate for gender equity, as well as empower and support coaches,” she explains, “which I really enjoy because I know and appreciate how much of an impact sports and coaches can have on an athlete.”

 

She also contributed to the landmark Kaplan, Hecker & Fink Gender Equity Review, an effort launched last year to close the huge disparity in funding and other support of women’s sports relative to men’s by the National Collegiate Athletic Association — an issue that came into particular prominence during the 2021 NCAA Division I basketball championships, when the mismatch between the mens’ and womens’ facilities received almost as much coverage as the games themselves. “Doing this work is how I have found value and purpose in my education and experiences, which began at St. Paul's,” she explains.

 

Ekstrand says she still draws motivation from advice her dad always gave her, to “make a difference and pay it forward.” That’s a piece of wisdom that must seem all the more vivid as she watches her own children grow up at SPS, where daughter Eliza ’24 plays lacrosse for a certain legendary coach who once taught a late-to-the-sport defender what can happen when you pick up a stick and turn it into a beacon for change.