PROUT IS BUSY ON AND OFF THE LACROSSE FIELD

One of the surprises of the National Lacrosse League off-season was veteran Colorado Mammoth star Gavin Prout being traded to Edmonton. Prout is a busy man on and off the field, as profiled below in this excerpt from the book WEEKEND WARRIORS: THE MEN OF PROFESSIONAL LACROSSE ($9.95, New Chapter Press, www.NewChapterMedia.com).

Gavin Prout, a forward with the Colorado Mammoth, usually has long days. He rises a 7 a.m., commutes an hour to work, works until 5:30, commutes the hour back home—to a gym—works out for ninety minutes, and finally, around 9 p.m., settles down for dinner. Not the typical life of a professional athlete.

Prout’s company, Special Benefits Insurance Services, in Toronto, is rolling out a new marketing campaign and Prout is “burning up the phone lines,” calling graphic designers and printers to obtain cost quotes. If that were not enough, it’s Friday, a day when the company is short-staffed, and Prout is picking up telephones, answering customer’s questions, pitching a few new products to potential customers, and working on the company website.

Special Benefits writes insurance policies for individual health and individual dental plans; the majority of its clients are Canadians who, in the process of changing or losing jobs, no longer have an employer’s health insurance. Prout is what he seems at first glance—a son following in his father’s footsteps, managing the family business, a venture that includes his brother Barry John, and his sister, Nicole.

But he is also a professional lacrosse player, leaving Toronto on the weekends to play for the NLL’s Colorado Mammoth as a forward. And what player he is. In his first five years in the National Lacrosse League, Prout racked up 149 career goals and 267 career assists. In his “career year” with the Mammoth in 2006, the 5′10″, 185-pound Prout appeared in all sixteen games regular season games, and scored 29 goals and 64 assists. In addition, he scored an amazing 10 goals and 15 assists during Colorado’s successful 2006 play-off run that ended with the NLL Championship, a victory that garnered Prout the Most Valuable Player award for the game.

This well-deserved success, however, was not without a journey of significant detours. Prout began his collegiate lacrosse career as a Laker at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa.

“Nobody recruited Canadians that much,” he says, ”probably because there were a limited amount of scholarships, and they didn’t want to gamble on Canadian kids who played box lacrosse that only uses one hand. The outdoor game is a little foreign to us.”

But Prout made an impression on Mercyhurst coach Pete Ginnegar, who saw him play in the World Lacrosse Games in Japan on Canada’s junior team in 1996. Coach Ginnegar invited him for a try-out and then offered him a scholarship.

“I never figured out what a ’Laker’ was exactly.” Gavin says, “The mascot was a really buff guy. That’s all I know.”

Gavin would not get four years to figure out the riddle. After his freshman year as a Laker, Mercyhurst College, which had a limited number of slots for Division I schools, decided to elevate hockey to Division I status and demote lacrosse to Division II.

“The rug was pulled out from under us,” says Prout. “There were five or six of us who had come from Canada just to play Division I lacrosse. We thought it was over.”

Not quite. Coach Ginnegar accepted the lacrosse job at Gannon University right down the street in Erie and took several of his best players with him, including Gavin Prout. Prout was then chosen captain of the Gannon University Knights.

“We had a great season. It was an up-and-coming program,” Gavin says. “The year before we came, the team was ranked fifty-first in the country, and after the first year we were twenty-ninth. We had the potential of being a top-twenty team, which was unheard of for any of Gannon’s sports programs.”

Sadly, the athletic director at Gannon decided the expense of a national lacrosse program was too exorbitant. He cut the program after Prout’s first and only season with the Knights.

“Then, I got a call from coach Dave Cottle of the Loyola Greyhounds in Maryland,” Prout says. “I thought it was somebody’s idea of a joke, but he asked if I was interested in coming down for a try-out. I sent him some game tapes and traveled to Maryland.”

The try-out did not go as well as Prout would have hoped. Two of the assistant coaches watched his work-outs and thought he was too small, not athletic enough, and wouldn’t fit well into the program. Cottle disagreed, overruled his assistants, and offered Prout a full scholarship. Cottle, whose work at the University of Maryland is now legendary, clearly saw something his assistants did not: as a Greyhound, Prout

achieved honorable mention as an All-American in 2000, made first team All-American in 2001, and was named captain of the Greyhounds.

So far, so good. And then, what looked like opportunity became a disaster: he was drafted by the NLL’s New York Saints. His play was outstanding—in 2002, he made the All-Rookie team, was named an NLL All-Star, and made second team All- Pro—but the franchise was in trouble. Prout describes his time there as “miserable.”

According to Prout, the franchise did not promote the team and, plagued by financial problems, management failed to reimburse players for expenses or pay on time. The shortage of money also created “ridiculous” schedules that had the team arriving early in the morning on the day of a game to conduct camps, and give interview and autograph sessions, with no time to eat, rest, or prepare for that night’s game.

The financial shortfalls also resulted in the team being evicted from hotels, and of promised game-day transportation that would never arrive. Prout also says the Saints management did not attend to the necessary international travel documents needed for the Canadian players.

“We would cross the border or go through customs at airports, and it would take four or five hours because we didn’t have the proper visas, we only had temporary visas,” Prout says. “Traveling was very difficult.”

All of this culminated into one of the darker moments in the NLL. In Prout’s final season with the Saints, he entered the locker room, minutes away from taking the field against the Philadelphia Wings, only to encounter his angry teammates, ready to strike. In addition to other problems, they hadn’t been paid in two months.

“The owner was there, and took aside a few of us, the captain and the assistant captains,” says Prout. “He made a bunch of promises that we would get paid and things would get better. We went back and told the rest of the team, and encouraged

everyone to play. They did. Things got better for a couple of weeks, and then, that was it.”

The Saints folded at the end of the season—but not before a minority owner, Charlie Russo, stepped up and opened his own checkbook to make sure everyone was fully paid and all expenses were reimbursed.

“That guy is a truly class act,” says Prout.

The folding of the Saints franchise left Prout an unrestricted free agent. He immediately became a heavily courted prospect by the other teams in the league.

“It was like going from the cellar to the penthouse. Everyone contacted me, and wanted to show their facilities—Calgary, Colorado, Toronto, Buffalo and Philadelphia. I traveled around the country to talk with management of the different teams. Everyone

put his best foot forward. It was a fun time in my career.”

Prout chose the Colorado Mammoth. The franchise was already on the upswing, and the team needed just a few pieces of the puzzle to win an NLL championship. With Prout in the line-up, they did just that in 2006. But a potential championship was not the major reason Prout went to the mile-high city.

“I wanted to play with Gary Gait,” says Prout of the alltime lacrosse legend and Mammoth player and later coach. “I’d played against him, but I’d never played with him.”

Gary Gait was the primary draw for Gavin Prout to select the Mammoth, but the mile-high city of Denver has its own appeal for a professional athlete.

“Denver is a sports town,” says Prout. “There are huge crowds for monster truck rallies, skateboarding, and—obviously— for NLL lacrosse.” In Denver, unlike New York, fans on the street recognize their star players and ask for autographs, a phenomenon the unassuming Prout says “is kind of neat.”

And then, too, Gavin gets to be a teammate with his close childhood friend, Gee Nash, the Mammoth’s starting goalie. The men are so close that teammates have nicknamed them “Starsky and Hutch.” One of Nash’s rituals is to have Prout be the last player to shoot against him before the beginning of the game.

“It’s his ritual, not mine,” says Prout. “But if I can be a part of something that will make him better, or allow him to prepare for the game, I’ll be glad to do it.” So, does he try to score during this ritual with his friend?

“Nope, I just try to lob them into his chest,” says Prout. “Once I accidentally whipped one in the corner and scored, and I received the most horrific glare imaginable. I could see it behind the mask. I’ll never do that again, but in my defense, the stick hooked.”

Fellow Mammoth teammate Brian Langtry says, “Gavin is a playmaker. It doesn’t matter if he is double or triple-teamed with guys draped all over him. He just makes plays happen. He’s Mr. Machismo. He has honor and you don’t test his honor. Gavin isn’t the biggest guy, but like Gordie Howe in hockey, he’s a guy who can score—and fight.”

Meanwhile, when he’s back home in Toronto running the family business, it’s not all serious. “I get to schmooze the clients a lot, which means I get out of the office to entertain at Maple Leaf hockey games, Blue Jay baseball games and Toronto Rock lacrosse games, well, not the Rock—those are the same nights I’m playing for the Mammoth. My brother gets to take the clients to the Rock games. We both are doing out part as ambassadors for the league. Clients come out watch the games, and end up buying season tickets.”

And insurance. Like Langtry says, Prout’s a playmaker.