Sports
Moorestown Resident to Be Inducted Into Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame
Ken Walker is a youth lacrosse coach in Moorestown and a record-holder at SUNY Oswego.
Ken Walker, a youth lacrosse coach in Moorestown and alumnus of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego, will be inducted into the Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday.
Walker played on the Oswego lacrosse team from 1977-80, piling up 201 career points, a record that still stands today. Walker scored 143 career goals, a record that stood for nearly three decades. In 1979 and 1980, Walker was among the top 10 scorers in the country.
“I guess like everybody would say it’s an honor. I played there for four years and we pretty much were one of the first teams to go to the NCAA, as an expansion team, because we were a club team beforehand,” Walker said. “We basically started the program. We still hold a number of team records. That’s still kind of special.”
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Walker also coached baseball and football while his son was going through the youth programs in Moorestown. He still coaches youth lacrosse, working with the seventh and eighth graders each year. Walker began playing lacrosse at Freeport High School in Long Island.
“(Freeport) gym teacher Randy Mills walked into the gymnasium one day and handed a bunch of us guys wooden lacrosse sticks and said, 'Congrats, you're the first youth lacrosse team for the town,'" Walker recalled. "I have played ever since.”
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Quite a few of Walker’s college teammates will be at the induction reception on Saturday. Walker saw many of them only three weeks ago at the annual Ron Humphries Alumni Weekend. Walker and his teammates created the lacrosse alumni weekend and named it after Humphries, a former teammate who passed away from cancer. The annual weekend boasts a game between the current players and the alumni and then a BBQ for everyone involved.
Walker fell in love with the sport of lacrosse almost immediately, captivated by the speed of the game and the contact.
“You are constantly on the move," he said. "It is a lot more active than most sports, and the contact of the sport. It's opposite of baseball, where it’s a slow-moving game. It's called the fastest game on two feet. It's very similar to hockey.”
