by Mark Kram, Daily News Sports Writer
Set to open his seventh Major Indoor Lacrosse League season when the defending champion Philadelphia Wings travel to Buffalo Saturday evening, Scott Gabrielsen could not help but wonder how the striking baseball players and locked-out hockey players would feel if they suddenly found themselves earning his salary: $450 per game.
“If anyone should be striking,” said Gabrielsen, one of the founders of the Major Indoor Lacrosse Players Association, “it should be us.”
Far removed from the world of pro baseball and hockey, where athletes are lavished with huge salaries and lucrative endorsements, MILL veterans such as Gabrielsen, a center attackman, have devoted themselves to the sport not for financial gain, but for “the sheer love of lacrosse.”
Forced to hold down outside jobs to support themselves – Gabrielson is a commercial real estate broker for Binswanger in Philadelphia – the players earn just $150 a game their first season and an additional $50 for each year of experience thereafter. The highest-paid player on the Wings is eight-year forward attackman Gary Martin, at $500 per game.
“The bottom line is: You do it for the love of the sport,” said Martin, in international systems at Unisys Corp. in Blue Bell. “We do volunteer appearances at bars and clinics to promote the sport, because we love it and want to see it grow.”
Veteran center attackman Chris Flynn agreed.
“Sure, I would enjoy earning $1,000 instead of $400 a game,” said Flynn, a mortgage banker for Main Line Federal in Villanova. “But, as a league, we are still in our infancy, where some of the other sports were 40 years ago. Those sports had players who paid the price for the players today, just as we are.”
From the packed houses that the Wings perform in, both at the Spectrum and on the road, it would appear as if the sport is doing exceedingly well. Whenever Gabrielsen looks up and sees crowds of 17,000 in the Spectrum, crowds that have paid ticket prices of $22, $19.50 and $14, he wonders why he and his teammates are not receiving a “larger slice of the pie.” Both Martin and Flynn concurred, but added, “The players will have their day.”
What eats at Gabrielsen and others is the players are just as dedicated as their colleagues in the other sports, if not more so. In addition to occasionally traveling out of state for games, the Wings also practice once or twice each week from 9 to 11 p.m.
It can be difficult to keep that up when there are wives and children to accommodate, especially when some players must commute from Baltimore and New York. However, as head coach and former player Tony Resch observed: “It beats working at a 7-Eleven as a part-time job.”
Ultimately, what drives Gabrielsen and his teammates is the pursuit of another championship, and the Wings should again be contenders this season. While the Wings will no longer have the services of the sensational Paul Gait, who has hooked on with the Rochester Knighthawks to be closer to his Buffalo home, the Wings still have brother Gary Gait and the same core of players who led them over host Buffalo, 26-15, in the championship game last season.
“The loss of Paul Gait is a blow, but we are hoping Gary and some of the others give us across-the-board production,” Resch said. “It should be an interesting season.”
He paused and laughed.
“Heck,” he said, “until baseball and hockey come back, the Sixers and the Wings will be the only game in town.”
The Wings open their home schedule Saturday, Jan. 20, at the Spectrum against Rochester.
(Philadelphia Daily News, January 5, 1995)