January 11th - 15th, 2006

Philadelphia, PA - Rock-it Pocket took a "field trip" to the US Lacrosse National Convention this weekend. Day one was written as a journal before lacrosse and other activities took over for the rest of the trip. Enjoy!

Wednesday, January 11th -

This entry is being written high above Pennsylvania on our relatively pleasant flight out.  I’m not sure how, exactly, but we all made it to the airport on time and even with a little time to spare this morning.  We managed to haul about 300 pounds of lacrosse heads and other gear into DIA and hopefully got it all to Philly together.  We shall see when we land.

While we weren’t necessarily planning on leaving a day early (convention starts on Friday, we usually get here on Thursday), it worked out that way and we are going to spend some of tomorrow touring the city and maybe even visiting Flip’s old stomping grounds just outside of the city.  It will actually be to our advantage to be here a day early and get some stuff done that we might not otherwise have a chance to do.  For instance, we’re hoping to launch the website in the next couple of days, so this is giving us a good opportunity to get everything tightened down. 

On the trip with us this weekend are Flip Naumburg (owner and head coach of Colorado State), Kale Nelson (sales guru, assistant coach and non-stop talker), Ryan Davis (sales rep and generally a good enough stiff to keep around), Pete Jokisch (CSU goalie and resident meathead), Tahlia Naumburg (niece and Flip’s personal assistant) and Alex Smith (me, also an assistant coach and aspiring web nerd).  We really have a pretty good entourage going on this trip, which should be fun.

This is my second trip to Philly for the convention after I went in 2003.  The thing that really stands out is that the lacrosse community is pretty small when you think about it.  For instance, two years ago, I was in an elevator coming back down to the vending area and in walks Bob Zimmerman (head coach of UMBC).  He sees my CSU polo and starts talking about Aspen and how beautiful Colorado is, etc.  Then, we get to the main floor, he says, “Nice to meet you,” hops out and goes on with his day. 

Non-lacrosse people might not see any sort of importance in this whatsoever, but it made me think that when you see a lot of these people in magazines or on TV, they seem so far away.  But then when you get 2-3,000 lacrosse people into one room, we’re all pretty close when it comes down to it.  We’re all lacrosse people at the very core of it all.

My plane seat GPS is telling me that we are getting very close to Philly and looking out the window, one can almost already feel the bone-chilling cold of the East coast.  Luckily for us, we are going to be blessed with 45-50 degree weather for at least the first couple days we are here. All I know is that I can see nothing but clouds on our descent into the city.

The Rest of the Trip

We arrived in Philadelphia a day early on Wednesday to some beautiful weather.  It was about 50 degrees and sunny, which was a nice change from the last couple of years we were in town.  We had a nice dinner on Wednesday night and on Thursday we decided to take a tour around Flip’s hometown just outside Philly.  We drove around Doylestown, PA and the surrounding areas for a while, taking in the sites and eating at a legitimate roadside diner called the Eagle Diner in New Hope.  It was a good way to spend a day, if you don’t count the double cheeseburger and milkshake-induced coma I had to fight off for the last part of the afternoon.

Friday marked the start of the convention as everyone got registered.  The downtown Marriott was inundated with lacrosse people of all shapes and sizes, most of them wearing their respective team’s jacket or sweatshirt.  Mostly Friday was an introduction to the main part of the event that was to occur on Saturday.  We opened up our vending tent at 2 pm for four hours before coming back down to the “Vending Extravaganza” from 8 – 11 pm.  People sort of milled about in the vending area for most of Friday night.  Lacrosse people know how these conventions work and they all wanted to wait until Saturday to find the best “deals,” so things weren’t exactly flying off the table on the first night of vending.

After a night of, ahem, recreational activities, we opened back up early on Saturday.  By “early,” I mean 10 am, which was more than early enough for the likes of us.  I tried to pace myself between the vending tent and some of the coaching clinics.  Petey and I watched a couple interesting clinics that gave us some ideas for the upcoming spring season at CSU.  Then I took a walk down to the Philadelphia market with Ryan and we stood in line for an hour for a Philly cheese steak at Rick’s.  They aren’t particularly great cheese steaks or anything, but it’s kind of a tradition for us to hit them up when we are in town.

We spent the rest of Saturday trying to unload as much merchandise as we could while getting quietly excited for the Broncos-Patriots game that evening.  We were lucky enough to close down the vending area at 6 pm, so we had two hours to get ready for the game.  During our fun the night before, we were able to secure a “private” table at the Independence Brew and Pub to watch the game. 

This turned out to be a pretty smart move because the Independence Pub was packed with lacrosse people watching playoff football.  We seemed to be the only Broncos fans in the bar and we did not hesitate to cheer on our team.  One quick note here: the Patriots fans sitting next to us seemed to have no desire to actually cheer FOR the Patriots.  What was that about?  Instead their main goal was letting us know every time the Broncos screwed up.  Luckily, the Patriots didn’t give them much to cheer about anyway and reminded them that muffing punts wasn’t exactly the type of thing that championship football teams did.  Oh, and I did have a fantastic sirloin sandwich and about 12 wings (and about 10 Yuenglings).

We had a flight at 9 am on Sunday, so we took our lives in our own hands by going out on Saturday after the games.  We mostly spent the evening in the hotel lobby hanging out with the rest of the lacrosse people.  Sunday morning came too soon, of course, and we struggled mightily to reach the airport on time.  Miraculously, we made BOTH of our flights on time, which had to be some sort of record and I slept all four hours of the flight home.

The one positive to an early flight was that we got to see most of the two Sunday playoff games as well.  Playoff football aside, it was a good trip for Rock-it Pocket.  We sold our requisite amount of heads and almost made it worth it for Flip to take so many of us out.  Our next big vending trip is the Vail Shootout, so we have six months to prepare ourselves.

Now the focus is on CSU lacrosse until the end of May.  We have a lot of work to do to return to the top of the MDIA, so there isn’t time to waste.  Stay tuned for more!!

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