Floods Keep Up Family Tradition

It first began in the early ‘70s. One wave ended in 1975, then another seven years later. And for more than two decades, it lay dormant, until, in 2003, it hit again.

And now, for the first time, it’s happening twice in the same year.

As the career of men’s lacrosse co-captain John Henry Flood winds to a close, the beginning of a burgeoning career is marked in the arrival of his younger sister, freshman attacker Sara Flood.

The flood of Floods has a long history at Harvard. The father of the siblings, John Flood ’75, played both football and lacrosse for the Crimson, as did their uncle, Mark Flood ’82. It was that strong family connection—and some lighthearted nudging from the earlier generations—that eventually convinced both John Henry and Sara to come to Harvard.

“There was definitely big-time pressure from my dad and uncle,” John Henry says. “My dad was like the biggest Harvard fan in the world. Our dad and uncle were just constantly chirping in our ears about Harvard and how it was the best school on Earth.”

According to men’s lacrosse coach Scott Anderson, that chirping comes from the best of sources.

“You can’t talk about John Henry or Sara without talking about their parents,” Anderson says. “They’re a great family. You meet their dad and their mother, and you can see it.”

The pair of New Jersey natives, both of whom attended the Lawrenceville School just outside of Princeton, had the task of choosing between joining the Tigers—a hotbed for lacrosse success in recent years—and Harvard, home to two programs of mid-level stature. Both Crimson programs have struggled this year, with the men sitting at 3-5 overall and the women maintaining a 2-8 record.

But the decision was about far more than records or a program’s past success. In addition to a family that made the choice relatively easy, Sara just did what many younger siblings do—she followed her big brother.

“That was definitely one of the determining factors in the end result,” she says.

John Henry, however, was quick to deflect credit for creating the sibling reunion.

“I definitely just told her to make her own decision,” he says. “She was getting recruited by all the top D-I programs in the country, and she came up here and I think she had a great visit.”

Sara’s arrival at Harvard might seem like a foregone conclusion in hindsight, but had the freshman decided to test her skills outside the Ivy League, she would not have been the first. The Floods’ other sibling, Ashley, is currently a junior lacrosse player at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

The Crimson blood, it seems, does not necessarily run through all Flood veins. But the urge to play—lacrosse or otherwise—is something that is apparent in every one of the children.

“We played in the backyard pretty much every single day, in the summer and stuff,” Sara says. “John Henry would sometimes play defense on me to kind of toughen me up.”

The big brother derived much of his own toughness as a three-sport star during his high school days at Lawrenceville. Though the fact that he had success in lacrosse comes as little surprise—he was a member of two New Jersey prep championship lacrosse teams—John Henry also captained both his football and wrestling teams during his senior year, placing second in the New Jersey prep state championships in the latter sport. One look at him at the faceoff-X makes it easy to see where he got his technique.

“He uses some of his wrestling moves down there,” Sara says.

But it is their family that has proved most crucial to shaping both of the sibling’s lacrosse games.

“Our whole family plays lacrosse,” John Henry says. “My mom coached and started a youth program for girls in our town, my dad was a great lacrosse player in college and high school, and all of our cousins all play lacrosse.”

True to form, it was the parental lessons away from the field that probably most kept the Floods out of trouble.

“Our house always had a lacrosse field in the backyard with shooting nets to make sure that our balls didn’t break any windows,” he says.

Though the rapport between the two now is undeniable, the past snares of a typical sibling relationship definitely exist.

“She had a bunny that she still has that I threw in tar and the entire thing got tar-covered,” John Henry remembers. “She still has it in her room at home. Since she was three years old, she’s slept with a bunny rabbit.”

Recollecting on the part of Sara was also somewhat animal-focused, though the manner was slightly different.

“When we were little, he’d wake up at like 5 a.m. and run down the halls screaming as loud as he could,” she says. “He was always obnoxious and sounding like a monkey or something.”

Rabbits and monkeys aside, the Floods’ newest mutual interest has been on attending school together for the first time in the pair’s life.

“We actually didn’t overlap in high school because JH took a year off,” Sara says. “We definitely see each other a lot, we take two classes together, and both playing lacrosse, some of our friends overlap.”

When John Henry graduates this June, it’s a good bet that the siblings will remain close. And while it may seem as if Harvard lacrosse will suffer with the breaking up of a sibling pair, fear not—there’s more where that came from. Six current players on the men’s roster are younger brothers of Crimson lacrosse alums.

It proves that a Flood-like story in lacrosse is no anomaly.

“It’s a sport that is much more conducive to playing with other people,” John Henry says. “It’s not like basketball where you can just go shoot hoops for a couple of hours. You need someone else to play with, and I think that’s the big reason you see all these families of lacrosse players.”

“At least when we were little, lacrosse was a really small network,” Sara says. “At every camp, you’d see the same people over and over again, so all the teams that I’m playing now, I know all the girls on their team. One kid gets going, and it’s a really fun sport.”

Harvard women’s lacrosse coach Sarah Nelson ’94, who has known the Flood family since the girls were in high school, says that it’s an intangible nature of the sport that brings families together—and she’s glad that one Flood followed the other.

“Lacrosse is just one of those sports that people fall in love with and pass on to their kids or siblings,” Nelson says. “It’s a small sport, a small tight community, and it just seems to be a sport that creates a passion in people. When kids are exposed to it, they get real passionate about it.”

And despite the differences between the two games, that passion resonates for both the men and women. When asked who’s better in their respective sports, Sara recognized the fact that her brother is one of the best at his craft—John Henry is currently ranked fourth in the nation in faceoff percentage, good for best in the Ivy League.

“He’s really specialized,” she says. “He’s just the best at what he does, at taking faceoffs. “He just gets the job done, and it takes a lot of athleticism and toughness.”

When posed with the same question, however, John Henry was a bit more direct.

“She’s definitely a better lacrosse player than me,” he says. “She’s a New Jersey legend—the all-time leading scorer at Lawrenceville, where a bunch of college All-Americans have come out of. I won’t dispute that.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.