We’re not in California anymore

December 5, 2009
Author: tfitch

The 2010 NLL season for the Washington Stealth kicked off at 8:30am today. Here are a couple of pictures and my notes from the morning session at the Comcast Arena in Everett. The new arena is nice, obviously it is a smaller than the other NLL arenas and pretty unassuming from the outside, but there doesn’t appear to be a bad seat in the place.

<figcaption id="caption-attachment-238" class="wp-caption-text">2009 NLL Rookie of the Year Rhys Duch, Paul Rabil and the Ninja</figcaption></figure>

First up, I’ve got the answer to the question on everyone’s mind – is the turf new? Nope, it is the turf from San Jose and the Ninja lives on! Maybe it’ll be changed before the season starts, but that sounds expensive, so I doubt it.

Curtis Hodgson submitted his application to be the team enforcer this year by having one of this front teeth removed this summer. He doesn’t have the full Tim Campeau going on, but it looks tough.

<figcaption id="caption-attachment-240" class="wp-caption-text">Stealth forward Tom Johnson cutting threw the middle during a drill</figcaption></figure>

A few very key faces were missing on the offensive side of the ball this morning. Colin Doyle, Jeff Zywicki and Luke Wiles were not present. Out the back door the faces I couldn’t find were goalie Matt Roik and defenders Brett Manney and Shaydon Santos. The absence of Shaydon didn’t surprise me too much because he didn’t join the Stealth until March last year. The others I would have liked to have seen there.

I’m missing a couple of names, but there were no numbers or names on the practice jerseys so I didn’t really know who’s who of the new guys. The Stealth expected 34 guys in camp and we counted about 25 this morning, so there were approximately 10 guys missing.

<figcaption id="caption-attachment-239" class="wp-caption-text">Coach Chris Hall taking charge</figcaption></figure>

Maybe they’ll pick up some players for tonight’s session.

Time to rest up for the evening go around. More later.