This is my personal story about getting to the 2018 World Lacrosse Championships. No, this is not a story about getting there in the literal sense – a story about going to the airport and flying to Israel would be pretty boring unless planes, trains and automobiles really get your motor running. My story is about money, how it can knock all of your best laid plans off track pretty quickly, and what you can do about it!
I have previously written about being on the wrong side of 30 but still having the drive to play internationally. Quite simply, I love this game. The only thing that would hold me back from getting to the 2018 World Lacrosse Championships in Israel would be money, and as luck would have it, it became an issue that almost derailed my journey before it truly began.
(Check out more on Denmark Lacrosse, HERE!)
2018 World Lacrosse Championships – Just Getting There!
It would be naive to want to play internationally and think that money would just magically be there. Being a member of the Danish Lacrosse Fighting Pastries at the 2016 European Championships was proof enough for me that it is definitely not cheap! A simple trip to Budapest, Hungary to play 8 games of lacrosse cost $2,500 USD per player for our 19 person team. We did a lot of fundraising to help here – we sold t-shirts, beers, did crowdfunding, ran a tournament and a camp, and even threw a pretty unsuccessful party to try and get money in to bring those costs down. All of it was team focused, and while it didn’t cut out all the costs for players, it did help us all a little bit.
Playing for the Fighting Pastries in 2018 is budgeted at $3000 USD per player so combined with the costs from Hungary we’re talking about $5,500 in out of pocket expenses to play for the Danish National Team in 2 major tournaments. All of this has to be paid between August 2015 and July 2018. This does not even include the cost of playing club lacrosse!
In addition to all these mounting costs, a lot can happen to you (or in this case, me) in 3 years. When we restarted the national team program in 2015 after 5 years in the wilderness, I was working 2 jobs and had no real expenses outside of renovating the house my wife, Cecilie, and I had just bought, and of course that old lacrosse habit. Life was good, and I had enough spare income to pay to play this wonderful game without too much additional stress.
Fast forward to January 1st, 2018, and I am now a full time student, working part-time, I have 2 kids at home, I play lacrosse on the side, and honestly just try to make ends meet. In Denmark, everyone gets paid monthly on the 1st of every month, and the bills also get drawn from your account the same day. So after the usual “money in – money out” that is the first day of the month in Denmark, I was left with minus $100 in the bank. I couldn’t make the $200 monthly installment to pay for my trip to Israel. I had also skipped the December payment because Christmas was coming and things would be tight with presents.
Things were not looking good. The costs were adding up, and I didn’t know how to proceed. There’s a long way from January 1st to February 1st when you have minus $100 to your name and two kids at home. I started to panic – can I even get the money together to make this happen? The $200 a month payments had been a struggle for me already, but now I was dropping a couple behind and it’s hard to bring that back on a student budget. Should I start selling my stuff to try and get some money in? Who would even want to buy anything that I own?
I literally walked up to Cecilie and told her that I had to pull out of the team for the World Championships. I was heartbroken, but could not put my family though this, and I simply couldn’t see a way of making it work. Thankfully she is a bit more optimistic than I am and said that we could probably make it happen but I’d need to go out and start working a 2nd job again – probably working nights at a bar in town like I used to. To be honest that wasn’t very high on my list of things to do now that I had 2 kids at home, and night shifts have a way of turning me into the worst person ever.
However, now I had a fall out option in my head, and a little bit of hypothetical breathing space.
The next thing that came to mind was that we had a club lacrosse trip to Norway booked for Copenhagen Lacrosse in February to play at the Scandinavia Cup, and with no money in the bank I wouldn’t be able to pay for flights and accommodation for that trip. So I rang the guy who runs the show in Copenhagen, Nicolai, and told him that I’d have to pull out of the trip to Norway and that things weren’t looking great for me to continue with the national team.
Nicolai is a very level-headed guy and a friend, he offered to loan me the money for the trip to Norway but only on the proviso that I take out a student loan from the Danish government, and start a crowdfunding account to get the money together for the trip to Israel. He seemed pretty confident that people would help me get it together and it was the reassurance I needed at the time. So I sat down at the computer that afternoon, applied for a student loan and set up a GoFundMe account to try and crowdfund the remaining 13,000kr (around $2000 USD) I had outstanding for the national team.
Crowdfunding is good. The Fighting Pastries got $2800 in 2016 by running a campaign but crowdfunding myself had always seemed a little bit shallow or selfish for some reason. Only a few months earlier had I paid some money towards my friend’s GoFundMe campaign to raise $100,000 for his wife’s brain surgery and here I was using the same platform to ask for money to go and play lacrosse. Unfortunately I didn’t have many options left. As a way of making it less like begging for lacrosse, I added in that I would do a push up, squat, or burpee for every 5kr (around 85cents US) that was donated and people could choose which of the three exercises it would be – all the exercises would be filmed and posted on my Instagram – @jnrobbo.
I wouldn’t describe myself as an overly popular person, I’ve got red hair… how many friends could I possibly have? But the response to the crowdfunding attempt was beyond anything I had ever imagined. Within the first two days it had ticked over to 2,500kr (a bit over $300) and I was starting to think that there really was a chance to gather the money I would need for this once in a lifetime opportunity. Obviously the people donating also wanted me to work for the money and they requested that I do burpees, so my first session was 300 burpees and it was fitting that Nicolai came to the gym with me since he got me to start the GoFundMe. FYI: 300 burpees in one sessions takes about half an hour, and is quite painful!
So the ball was now rolling, my body was getting a great workout, and I was getting donations in from friends, family, co-workers, ex coworkers, old teammates, acquaintances and well wishers. Since then I have been working my way through the push-ups, burpees, and squats as promised.
Slowly but surely the money was coming in, but then it stagnated a bit around 10,000 kr and didn’t seem to go anywhere for about a week.
Maybe I was out of people who cared.
At midnight on Friday the 19th of January everything changed.
I was in the kitchen washing and steaming baby bottles for our 6 month old (I’d forgotten to do it earlier and there were no clean bottles left for the night) and my phone went off. When people make a donation you get an email notification and a couple of people whom I’ve never met in person had donated money into the account and the sheer power of humanity really hit me hard.
I cried.
These were not tears of joy, or sadness, or even tears of relief. These were tears that came from knowing that there was someone out there who was so truly caring, and in one case, even wanting nothing in return. I replied to each of the donations, and one of them wrote me back, asking that instead of doing push-ups, burpees, or squats, they wanted me to instead spend 1 minute of real quality time with my kids for every 5kr they donated, because they thought I was working hard enough as it was.
I couldn’t believe it. Part of me still can’t. This gift has touched me to my core.
I’ve always been a firm believer in lacrosse having a great culture, that the lacrosse family is something special, and that the community is worth being a part of, otherwise I wouldn’t still be here playing on the wrong side of 30.
So I want to send everyone a huge thank you to everyone who helped me go from dropping out of the team due of money issues to having my outstanding payments covered within the space of 3 short weeks. Thank you to Nicolai for giving me the kick in the pants that I needed and for being a great friend. Thanks to my wife Cecilie for believing in me, supporting my dreams, and making her life with me. Thanks to my kids! If I still owe you push-ups, squats, and burpees, I promise you that I’ll get them done. Carving out even more quality time with my children will also continue!
So here I am, ready to get to Israel and compete not just for Denmark, but for all the people who have helped make this a reality. The 2018 World Lacrosse Championships have taken on a whole new meaning for me, and I have all of you to thank!
When I moved to Denmark in 2012, I had nothing apart from a backpack with some clothes and my lacrosse gear. My teammates in Copenhagen and all the Fighting Pastries in Denmark took me in, made me a part of their strange little family and they make all the ups and downs worth it. My old apartment even bares the burn marks on the wooden floor from a good party or two. So thank you to my teammates for the shoulders to lean on when the times have been tough, especially over the last few months and thank you to everyone who helped me come back from the verge of dropping out of the team 3 weeks ago.
So the Fighting Pastries are here with a ginger hobbit ready to get to Israel. I am looking forward to standing side by side with my teammates and competing not just for Denmark but for all the people who have helped make this a reality. Hopefully there will be some tears of joy this time.
Note: a lot of international teams have fundraising campaigns running at the moment, gathering money, selling t-shirts and trying to make international lacrosse more accessible for their players. So if you want to support a good cause find your team and get involved. Every small piece of help is valuable.
