I grew up in southern Ontario. Other than a year and a half in Ottawa and a four month work term in Redmond, Washington, I have lived my entire life within a two-hour drive of Toronto. That area is home to about 60% of NLL players. But unlike them, my first exposure* to the sport of lacrosse came when I was twenty-one. My university roommate Steve bought himself a lacrosse stick. He didn’t know anyone else who had one, so he played a lot of wall ball. The extent of my lacrosse experience at that time consisted of tossing a ball straight up a few times, not much further than a foot or two. I usually caught it.

After that semester, lacrosse left my mind once again and stayed out until almost ten years later. On April 1, 2000, I went with some friends to a Wings/Bandits game in Buffalo. That’s the day I fell in love with lacrosse. I immediately became a Rock season ticket holder and in December of that year, I went to my first ever Toronto Rock game, a 17-7 win over the Ottawa Rebel. Here are some of my memories and impressions about the team and the league from that year.

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