Colorado Mammoth Message Board

I guess I'm going to jump out there and ask the first question!

First, I'd like to thank Steve for all the hard work he does on behalf of the Mammoth, the players, and us, the fans. Not only has he subjected himself to the questions from the morning guys on KBPI, now he's subjecting himself to our questions too. I hope we don't cause him too much misery.


So...

We all know that these guys have day jobs in a wide variety of professions, and it's got to be difficult to balance those jobs with playing in the NLL. More so when some of the guys are coming from not only other parts of the US, but Canada as well.

As a second boss for the Mammoth players, do you (and the other GM's) talk to the bosses at those other jobs about how the NLL works, giving them assurances that they won't miss too much work and so forth? Is there ever a struggle to make sure guys are available for a majority of games in a season?

And thanks again for answering questions.

Wow, first question! First off, thank you very much for your dedication as a fan and thank you for asking the first question.

Hopefully, I can answer all the questions posted here with at least, a little insight into the Mammoth, the NLL and how this thing works from the inside.

In answer to your question, it is a challenge dealing with "real jobs or day jobs". We do have a system in place in our Collective Bargaining Agreement where players are compensated for "missed work" days during the week. This provides at least some comfort to the player that he will not be out of pocket for playing lacrosse.

We don't normally communicate with their "other" bosses, we mostly leave that to them. Just like in any job situation there are more understanding bosses and less understanding bosses. I generally leave it to them to arrange their time off and work the Mammoth schedule into theirs.

Some of the things that I know the Mammoth does, is to communicate months in advance the schedule for practice and games so that the players are not blindsided the week before with a schedule for travel. Hopefully this is something that the players comunicate with their respective employers.

The other great situation that we have is that many of our guys work for people in the industry or in our market and they know and understand that the having a Mammoth player working for them is hopefully a positive in the community and their marketplace.

We also hope that when each of those players enters a new employment situation that they explain their playing situation and their "part time" job before they take a job so that there is no confusion. Most of the guys have done a great job in building the necessary relationships in order to get the time off.

And then sometimes there are unavoidable situations where a player just can't play, reference Josh Sims last week, at the US Lacrosse convention and his lacrosse manufacturing employer just wouldn't allow him to leave. Our hope is that we have sufficiently prepared our team with depth at appropriate positions in order to withstand small setbacks like that.

It is definately a two way street, the players must be flexible and so must we.

Hopefully that answer works for you and hopefully my first crack at this process was a success.

SG

Yep, that's a great explanation. Thanks!

well at times this sounds so bad to me as there are some employers who are not ready to think anything about the employee even when it is such an important event. I think slowly this is what the image of the employers are becoming they are so self centered they can think nothing apart from their own business. Really it is a loss to see important games missing out on key players just for the sake of a stubborn employer!

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Its time we looked at the services of the Arizona PEOs