Albany NLL coach aims for title
Glenn Clark thinks the new team has a realistic shot at the championship
Glenn Clark once helped deny Albany a professional indoor lacrosse championship.
He’ll try to deliver one to New York’s capital as the head coach and general manager of the new National Lacrosse League franchise that begins play at Times Union Center in December.
Clark, 51, won five NLL championships as a player with the Toronto Rock, including a 13-12 victory over the now-defunct Albany Attack in the 2002 championship game at TU Center, then known as Pepsi Arena. The game drew 9,289 fans, the largest crowd in the Attack’s four-year run before moving to San Jose in 2004.
“When you’re engaged in it as a player, you obviously remember the energy,” Clark recalled recently. “It’s just the intensity of a championship game, so it just had that feel about it. It had that buzz.”
That’s an atmosphere the Attack rarely captured, drawing only 3,689 per game in their final season before moving.
Clark said this team — which doesn’t have a nickname yet — can succeed where the last one failed. He cited the leadership of the team’s new ownership group, which relocated the franchise from Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut, and team president George Manias.
“We’re going to have a very positive footing in the community,” Clark said. “They (management) think the fans will kind of fall in love with the sport, gravitate toward it, and it’s a game that really sells itself. You watch indoor lacrosse at the highest level, and it’s got every aspect you want. Just the speed, the physicality and really the plays guys make in tight windows at high speed.”
Clark, a native of Pickering, Ontario, played at that level before putting away his stick in 2006 and immediately becoming Toronto’s head coach. He was fired by the Rock during the 2009 season.
He had more success in his second opportunity with the New England Black Wolves, who played at Mohegan Sun before coming to Albany. Clark was named NLL Coach of the Year in 2016 and had the Black Wolves in first place with an 8-3 record last year before the season was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
When former lacrosse All-american Oliver Marti bought the team with his partners last month, he decided to keep Clark, whom Marti had played against in the NLL.
Marti pointed out Clark also excelled coaching Team Canada, winning gold in the world indoor championships.
“The ultimate goal is to win a championship, and you want to have
guys who have been there and know what it’s like to experience the pressure and deliver,” Marti said. “He’s done that as a player and as a leader of the team. Just from our conversations, he seems to have a very good grasp of how to help create a culture of team as opposed to individuals.”
Clark, who has four children and lives in the Toronto area, is a retired physical education teacher who goes by the nickname “The Professor.”
“It’s great that he was a teacher,” Marti said. “I think that helps in knowing how to communicate and discuss different plays and set ups and things like that.”
Clark said his team should be one of about eight with a realistic chance of winning an NLL title next season. Their forwards include University at Albany graduate Joe Resetarits, a former second-team all-league player.
Albany also has an elite goaltender in Doug Jamieson, who won the NLL Goaltender of the Year Award last year after leading the league with a record .829 save percentage.
“It is (capable of a title),” he said. “It’s got all the elements you need.”