By: Gary Simeone

Fred McFarlin’s name will forever be cemented into the history of Long Valley. The eighty-nine-year-old former resident, was recently elected into the New Jersey Lacrosse Hall of Fame for his outstanding achievements in the sport. His son, Kevin McFarlin drove from his home in Georgia this summer to New Jersey to pick up the award on his father’s behalf.

“Our family lived in Long Valley when I was younger in the 1970’s, and my father was very instrumental in the lacrosse scene at the time,” said Kevin. “At the time there was really no kind of lacrosse program in western Morris County. There were no public high school or youth programs and my dad ended up changing all of that.” 

McFarlin said that in 1974, his dad put together the Long Valley youth lacrosse program, and in 1975 he started the West Morris Central High School boy’s lacrosse club in Chester. 

“He teamed up with Dave Pooley, who was the first head coach of the sport at Fairlawn High School in the 1960’s, and together they helped form a girls’ team, turn West Morris into state champs and a whole lot more.”

You could say that Fred McFarlin has been involved with the sport of lacrosse all of his life. He grew up in upstate New York in the Rochester area, which has an established lacrosse scene. He attended a prep school in Baltimore, Maryland, where he played lacrosse and attended Cornell University, where he played club ball. After graduating college, he went on to the United Sates Navy, where he spent twenty years of his life as an ROTC officer.

McFarlin said that when his dad went on reserve from the Navy, he moved his family to a small community in Long Island called Lynbrook.

“We lived in Lynbrook and nearby Rockville Centre, when I was little, from about 1965 to 1973,” said McFarlin. “My dad spent his time as a youth lacrosse coach there and he also coached football.  In fact, one of the players who went through his program on Long Island was Quint Kessenich, who is now a bigtime sports broadcaster on ABC and ESPN.”

The McFarlin family moved to the Long Valley area in 1973, and stayed in the area for over a decade before moving to Virginia and then onto North Carolina in the late 1980’s. They eventually moved to the state of Florida and now Kevin lives near his father in southeastern Camden County, Georgia.

“My father coached at the high school level and at college while in Virginia, started a youth program when we lived in North Carolina and coached for a few years in Florida, before he fully retired from the sport. Basically, everywhere he went he started a lacrosse program or youth league. It was truly his life’s passion.”

McFarlin said that in the 1990’s, his father pitched an idea to the then president of the USA Lacrosse Foundation, to form a National Youth Lacrosse Association.

“The president loved the idea and gave my dad the leeway to go-ahead and form the new Association. He also wrote a letter on behalf of my father, that he was the catalyst who helped form the NYLA, which is now an integral part of USA Lacrosse. I think that the letter was a contributing factor in his Hall of Fame ballot.”

Fred McFarlin was never about winning championships or trophies or all of the other accolades that come along with sports.

As Kevin says, “The fundamentals of the game and sportsmanship were the most important things to him. Raising young men and growing the game wherever he went, that was what really mattered to my dad.”