Is Canada Lacrosse Run by Club Guys?

According to an article by Inside Lacrosse’s Stephen Stamp and Matt Kinnear, the Canadian Men’s National Team is late on their paperwork. And with the World Games in Israel only three months away, the defending gold medalists could be in trouble.

According to Furlong, Greer and several others, none of the 34 players in the final player pool have signed their player contracts for the Worlds. In addition, most of the players haven’t sent back other paperwork — including some anti-doping paperwork and equipment forms.

There’s a fear they are running out of time to resolve the issues prior to the July games.

As former captains/administrators of a club lacrosse team, we’ve seen this movie before. Writing angry texts in the GroupMe for guys to get dues and waivers in. Texting them individually when they don’t respond. Waiting in their dorm rooms with the lights off until they come home from class. You know, regular teammate stuff.

Club lacrosse has a rampant problem with paperwork. Turns out a lot of unforeseen problems arise when you leave the logistics of traveling around the country and the management of budgets in the tens of thousands of dollars up to some bros in their early twenties. Who could have known.

For the Canadian National Team, it’s a little different. Instead of pure negligence, they’re late on their paperwork because of some internal disputes, according to IL.

Those issues are the same ones that surfaced last fall when the Canadian national team chairman and directors sent a letter to the CLA asking for three things: that the CLA not make unilateral changes to the National Team Policy and Guidelines, that the CLA begin the process of regaining the charitable organization status it lost because of a funding program deemed inappropriate by the Canada Revenue Agency, and that the CLA improve insurance coverage for players taking part in national team activities.

A fourth request has been added by the members of the men’s field lacrosse program, namely that the chairman (Dean French) and directors (Johnny Mouradian for men’s box and Gary Gait for women’s field) be reinstated and that Gait be named interim director for the men’s field team. French, Mouradian and the late Dave Huntley were dropped by the CLA last fall, although the CLA erroneously claimed that the group had offered their resignations.

So the first three reasons all sound like they have legal implications that are important to the players’ well-being. Fair. The fourth is such a club guy move. The players staging a coup against the administration to reinstate their old coaches who were “really chill” and “actually nasty back in the day?” That’s club as can be!

So shoutout to you hosers for sticking up for yourselves. Just please get this straightened out before July. In 2014, an issue with the Iroquois passports denied us a chance to watch the world’s three lacrosse powers all take the stage and we don’t want a repeat of that.

Hopefully this summer we’ll be saying L’Chaim to a smooth and exciting World Games.