Toronto Rock Clean House, Replace Entire Coaching Staff
Posted January 20, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The struggling Toronto Rock are making major changes early in the 2009 National Lacrosse League season.
After opening the season with a 1-2 record, the team fired head coach Glenn Clark, co-coach Jim Veltman and assistant Terry Bullen on Tuesday. Veltman will remain with the club as an adviser.
Jamie Batley, who has coached in Colorado and Chicago, takes over the head coaching job while Jim Milligan and Bob Keast have been named the club’s new assistants.
“Our ownership and management believe that our team has the ability to contend for a championship and trust Jamie and his group will move the team forward in this direction,” Mike Kloepfer, the Rock’s director of lacrosse operations, said in a release.
Batley posted a regular-season record of 26-13 with the Colorado Mammoth from 2003 to 2005 and led the team to three consecutive playoff berths. He was named head coach and GM of the now-defunct Chicago Shamrox in June 2006 before the franchise’s first NLL season appearance in 2007. Batley has also won three Mann Cups as the coach of the Peterborough Lakers.
Toronto has a great offence on paper, but things have yet to come together on the floor for the club. After a 16-9 loss in the team’s home opener Saturday, Clark was at a loss to explain the Rock’s struggles.
“For a group that is so talented, it’s puzzling,” he said. “The chase continues for what it’s going to take to get to these guys.
“We’re bad. There is no sugar-coating it. It was embarrassing. I’m worried. You lose ground early in the season, and it’s hard to catch up.”
Batley will make his debut behind the bench when Toronto plays its next game Jan. 31 in Rochester.
