Teachers and Firefighters in the NLL

The NLL is unusual among professional sports leagues, in that players don't make enough money from playing to make it a full-time career, and so they have other jobs. By way of comparison, the highest paid players in the NLL (players marked as "franchise players") make less than $30,000 a year. The lowest-paid players in major league baseball makes almost fourteen times that amount.  Of course, that's just the actual playing salary. Some players such as Brodie Merrill and Paul Rabil have sponsorship deals, some run events like lacrosse camps or work for lacrosse organizations, and many also coach high school or college lacrosse, but most players have a job outside the lacrosse world entirely. Here are some examples from the Toronto Rock: Sandy Chapman is a nurse; Blaine Manning is a bond trader; GM Terry Sanderson owns a sporting goods store (specializing in lacrosse, of course) and son Josh works there as well; Pat Maddalena is a chiropractor; and former Rock teammates Dan Ladouceur and Bob Watson are both police officers.

Around the league, there are hydro workers and factory workers and police officers and guys that work in marketing and engineering and sales. There are lots of college and university students, and just like the rest of society, I'm sure there are guys that are looking for work. Cory Vitarelli of the Knighthawks "aspires to be a professional lacrosse player" and we wish him all the best on that lofty goal.

Something I've noticed over the years is the number of teachers and firefighters among NLL players. I have no real statistics on this since I don't have a complete list of players and their occupations, but it's strange how often I hear that so-and-so lacrosse player is a firefighter or teacher. At one point in 2001, the Toronto Rock had five Vancouver firefighters on the team at one time – Dan Stroup, Pat Coyle, Chris Gill, Craig Gelsvik, and [I'm afraid time has gotten the better of me because I can't remember the fifth but I think it might have been] Ryan O'Connor. At the same time, there were at least four teachers – Jim Veltman, Colin Doyle, Glenn Clark, and Anthony Cosmo. So on a roster of about 22 players, at least nine of them – over 40% – were either firefighters or teachers.

All five of those firefighters have since retired, but there are still a few others in the NLL, most notably former MVP Dan Dawson. Last season, the Minnesota Swarm attempted to match the Rock's list but only ended up with three – Ryan Cousins, Andrew Suitor, and Jon Sullivan. According to his bio on the Knighthawks site, Joel McCready "studied firefighting at Texas A&M". Travis Gillespie of the Stealth is also a firefighter in BC.

And then there are the teachers. We could populate a small school just with current and former NLL players: Colin Doyle, Anthony Cosmo, Dan Carey, Bill Greer, Jeff Bigas, Matt Vinc, Jim Veltman, Curtis Hodgson, Shawn Williams, Glenn Clark, John Tavares, Troy Cordingley, Scott Ranger, Mike Accursi, Tim Soudan... and those are just the ones I knew about or found after some brief research. Most of the NLL team websites don't list a player's occupation, so it's not unlikely that there are a bunch more.

I'm sure there is no causal relationship here; being a lacrosse player from a young age did not likely cause these guys to want to become teachers. And I can't even be sure that there is a correlation. If we take the total number of NLL players and determine what percentage of them are teachers, how does that relate to the percentage of teachers among the general population? Or to be more accurate, how does it compare with the percentage of teachers among men aged 20-40? Another question is how many of these guys teach phys. ed? Since they are all athletes, being physically fit and active has been important to them their whole lives. As a result, it's not unlikely that a good number of them enjoy it, and want to pass that knowledge and love of sports and physical activity on to the next generation. Actually, I'd be interested to know how many of these teachers do not teach phys. ed.

Do you know of other lacrosse players with interesting occupations? Did I miss any firefighters or teachers? Leave me a comment and let me know!