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SALT LAKE CITY — Bubba Fairman knew he loved lacrosse from the time he'd played his first game.
"We came home after our first lacrosse game, and we told our dad we should have a yard sale and just sell all the baseball stuff," Fairman said of the brothers' first game.
That love of the game, which led the Fairmans to eschew all other sports, including baseball and football, resulted in Bubba becoming the nation's No. 1 prospect, an Under Armour All-American, and a full ride scholarship to Maryland, where he will enroll in the fall of 2017. For Jay and Melanie, Bubba's parents, it's the result of years of hard work and sacrifice coming to fruition.
"After school, he and his dad would go out and practice for hours and hours," Melanie says. "Everyone else is watching TV or playing video games, and he's out there trying to get better. I think it was a love of the sport, but I also think he knew that it could lead him to other places."
Those inclinations of lacrosse taking him to bigger places have come true, and success has followed. After spending his freshman and sophomore years playing and attending Brighton High School, he helped win a championship in his sophomore season. As a junior in high school, Bubba attended the Calverton School, a boarding school in Maryland. On a scholarship, he helped Calverton win a championship. After returning to Brighton for his senior season and winning yet another Utah High School Lacrosse League title, Bubba accepted a full-ride scholarship to play for Maryland.
Thus has begun a new chapter for the 18-year old. A local phenom since middle school, his national profile and following increased tremendously through his play at the Under Armour All-American Tournament in 2015. Bubba reclassified the 2017 graduating class for athletics, a stroke of luck, for Maryland's quota of scholarship money and players had already been filled for the 2016 season.
As he waits his turn to star for Maryland, Bubba is now attending and playing for yet another prestigious prep school, this time in Massachusetts at the Deerfield Academy. For Bubba, the academics are just as important as the athletics.
"It's totally different here," Bubba says. "Education is a lot more valued here than at my previous public schools. Everything here is a step up from anything I'm previously used to."
The future for lacrosse's shooting star has yet to be determined. A career in lacrosse's professional league, the MLL (Major League Lacrosse) doesn't offer the financial security of a professional football or basketball career, and Bubba is preparing accordingly, at least in terms of education.
"I'm going to school with an open mind," Bubba says. "Maryland has one of the best business schools in the nation, so that's an option, but as of now, I'm just going with the flow."
Quick to recognize family, friends and mentors as crucial to his success, Bubba says it's been difficult to spend so much time apart from them.
"Our family is a very close family. I've gotten use to this, I guess, since I've done it before, but it's never easy. I think family is one of the most important things, and that makes the transition a little harder, but at the end of the day, I've got amazing people looking out for me here, and that makes it a little easier."
A bright future undoubtedly awaits, but Bubba has already done more than enough to make his family proud.
"He's already surpassed any expectation I've ever had," Jay says. "Anything beyond this will be a plus." Stephen Lindsey is a student at the University of Utah currently working as an intern with KSL.com in Salt Lake City. Contact him at th3sl3@gmail.com or interact via his Twitter handle, @slthe3
