Captain Hodgson announces retirement from Stealth
Cliff Smith is one of Curtis Hodgson’s longest-serving teammates and closest friends in lacrosse, and he admits he’s not quite sure what Hodgson retiring from the Vancouver Stealth will really mean to the group.
“I bet half the stuff he did for us we don’t know about and will never know about,” Smith, 32, said of Hodgson, 36, the Stealth captain who announced on Monday that he was calling it quits after a 13-year career in the National Lacrosse League. “He looked after the guys before he looked after himself, and he did whatever needed to be done without hesitation.”
The Stealth have yet to announce who will take over the captaincy. Their regular-season opener is Dec. 8, when the Colorado Mammoth visit the Langley Events Centre.
Hodgson recently accepted a vice-principal’s position at Burnaby South Secondary and says he simply no longer has the time to play in the winter box-lacrosse loop.
In a text message, the righthanded defender stated he wasn’t clear yet on whether he’d still play summers in the Western Lacrosse Association with the New Westminster Salmonbellies. He’s their captain as well, and helped them reach the Mann Cup national senior A final last month, where they lost to the visiting Peterborough (Ont.) Lakers.
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound Hodgson played his entire NLL career with the Stealth franchise, signing initially as a free agent in December 2004. He got into 211 regularseason games, scored 35 goals and recorded 105 points, to go with 104 penalty minutes.
He was also part of their 2010 league-championship team.
Hodgson played five seasons with the franchise in San Jose, Calif., then four in Everett, Wash., before being part of the squad moving to the LEC just before the 2014 campaign.
He suited up for 14 of Vancouver’s 18 regular-season games last season, and finished with one goal and five points.
Hodgson even has a connection with the Vancouver Ravens. He was a fourth-round pick of the NLL’s first team in the Lower Mainland in 2001, but never played a game with them, in large part due to injuries. The Ravens folded in the days leading up to the 2005 campaign and Hodgson signed on with the Stealth.
Hodgson will continue to direct the Stealth Lacrosse Academy and Junior Stealth program, and will remain with the Stealth in a front-office position yet to be announced. The Stealth will honour Hodgson during the season, and promised in a news release they’d elaborate on that in the future.
“Curtis has embodied everything that is good about our sport over his entire career,” Stealth general manager Doug Locker said in the release. “He has been an exceptional player on the floor and an unbelievable leader to a generation of players off the floor. He has always been a great ambassador of the game.”