It's nearly midnight. The trunk is packed with uniforms. The players are asleep (or they should be). And Brian is sitting at the computer for some last-minute musings.
The last day before our opening road trip suddenly got here, and when I left the office at around 4:25 today I had a ton of things to do. The players, fortunately, were relaxing with their teammate Jari Voutilainen at his house, getting ready to watch the Stanley Cup. There were still a lot of things to do, however, to get ready for our trip.
First it was a run to see Mike Curtis at Curtis Business Products, who had made our uniforms with their new "11even" brand. They look sharp, and later tonight when a few players tried them on, they liked how light and comfortable they were! Score one for the Boss. After checking the unis, ordering quick schedule cards, and making sure Coach Ekroos' Jags polos were ready (they were), it was on to the next stop - NAFL title sponsor Floorball Planet.
Running into the store, owner Darryl Gross was ready and we spent some time sorting out the Jags' travel crate and picking up some desired swag for the players to represent in California. (Get your swag here!) Then it was back to the Purvis office in Fort Worth (my home office for my real job) to pick up some items I had neglected to grab, and finally (I thought) up to Academy in Highland Village for uniform socks to go with the nifty new unis. Alas, no socks! A quick, panicked run to Dick's Sporting Goods next door...and I came up about four pairs short. What to do?
When you're the owner, you make it happen! I ran another 30 minutes to the Lewisville Dick's and got my last four pairs of socks, then hauled it for the house to put it all together. Shortly after getting home, Coach called and asked me to come get the guys staying here from Jari's where the Cup had just gone to overtime. I finally got home for good around 10:20, having put almost 150 miles on the road and been all over the Metroplex.
Now, about an hour later, everything is packed. The trunk is ready, and the briefcase is loaded. My wife and co-owner Leigh has prepped a breakfast casserole in the fridge so we can heat, eat, and run in the morning. The flight pushes back at 9:10, but I have 13 players to check in! We fly to Ontario, CA and drive up to Fresno because the flights to LA were much less expensive than going to Fresno directly. Tomorrow night we will check into our AirBnB's, and have a team meeting, issue our gear, and talk about what we hope to accomplish in the season.
Friday night is it - the big game! I hope you can join us either live in Fresno, or if you can't get there, watch us on Solidsport. I can promise you that if you haven't seen floorball from Europe you will be in for a real treat. It's fast, precise, and a ton of fun to watch. Five weeks from now when we get home, we hope to raise the Troy Cup in our home stadium for our home fans - and go down in history as the first NAFL Champions!
