Sad but true, Road Trip Dad’s days at JustLacrosse.com are numbered.
After posting my weekly lacrosse blog (almost) every week for the past ten-plus years, my host is closing up shop. Thankfully, he found a new home for me before locking the doors.
Here’s our history…
I first got to know Dennis Pettit when he invited me to join his Casey Powell College Lacrosse Poll for his JustLacrosse.com website maybe around 2008 or so. I was still coaching at Oswego State at the time, and I had spent a few years on the USILA Coaches’ Poll, so I was both invested and experienced. It was a challenging but fun task, and I think I did that for two or three years.
Then, in May of 2010, I was abruptly separated from my long-time part-time coaching position at SUNY Oswego. The administration decided to hire a full-time coach, and I was still teaching at Hannibal High School; I couldn’t afford to apply for the job.
As they say, “when one door closes, another one opens,” and that couldn’t be more true in my case. In the 2010-2011 school year, I pursued my love for coaching and found myself doing girls’ soccer at Hannibal, and girls’ ice hockey and then boys’ lacrosse at Oswego HS (as a varsity volunteer with the lacrosse team). That same year, as things worked out, my sons were freshman and junior members of the SUNY Brockport men’s lacrosse team, and I was free to skip an Oswego practice or game to go watch them play.
I became “Road Trip Dad” before I ever hit the keyboard. I went to fall scrimmages and every spring game, home and away. My sons weren’t always lucky enough to get into every game, but I enjoyed meeting other players and their parents. I was a colleague and former rival of Golden Eagles head coach Ben Wineburg, and I enjoyed chatting with him before and after games. Whether Brian and/or Eric played in any given game or not, I enjoyed the road trips and tailgates.
And then, in my second year of following my sons and their Brockport teammates all over Upstate NY, it hit me – I could write about my experiences! – from the fairly unique position of not just a parent, but a parent with 28 years of head coaching experience and perspective.
Ah, but who would read such drivel – and where could I showcase my talents?
Re-enter Dennis Pettit and JustLacrosse.com.
I pitched my idea to Dennis, and he was supportive from the first suggestion. His website was mostly a bulletin board of lacrosse stories, originally published elsewhere, but collected and posted for anyone looking for local, Upstate lacrosse stories. My series of blogs would be something exclusive for Just Lacrosse; readers would have to go to his website – and his website only – to read my stuff.
My very first blog – and over the course of ten years, I’ve gradually come to accept that word – was published February 22, 2012. It was actually entitled something very short-sighted, like “Part 1” or something like that. After just two or three weeks, Dennis suggested I give each entry its own title; that first one was creatively re-named “The Beginning.”
I have all 519 (give or take) RTD blogs archived, so I revisited the first few months’ worth to see what my subjects covered back when I got started. Titles include eye-catching phrases like “Early Season Lacrosse,” “Garmin GPS and XM Radio,” “First-two-game week of the season,” “33 Hours of Hockey and Lax,” “Recruiting vs. Teaching Camps” (a repeatedly favorite RTD rant), “Five for Foxboro,” “More from Foxboro, and ‘Crooked Arrows’,” and the prophetic “Heading to Lake Placid.”
Dennis was always flexible when it came to deadlines, but I needed the structure. Sundays became my writing day, and I’ll admit that there were many, many weeks when I sat at the keyboard not really knowing what I was going to write about. Most of the time, I emailed my blogs into Dennis by 7 PM. But some weeks it was closer to midnight. Again, Dennis never complained, and he usually posted each blog either late Sunday night or Monday morning.
Dennis was also a patient and thorough proofreader, which saved me from a lot of embarrassment. You’d think that a career high school English teacher who preached careful re-reading and editing to his students for 30+ years would, perhaps, practice what he preached, but that wasn’t always the case. “You left out the word ‘the’, he’d email me, or “I changed ‘mellow’ to ‘yellow’ when you were writing about the ref’s flag.” Like I said, he was very easy to work for.
And yes, he even paid me for my efforts. It wasn’t much, but it was extremely rewarding for me to receive bi-monthly paychecks for my writing! I had not seen that coming when I was still coaching.
Like I said, Dennis has been incredibly supportive. From occasionally meeting up with him at a high school showdown between J-D and Niskayuna, or the playing fields at Lake Placid, or sitting with one another at the Upstate Lacrosse Foundation’s Hall of Fame dinner, we enjoyed a common passion for the game and a friendship that grew over the years.
He also came to high school tournaments and snapped pictures of me on the sidelines in Syracuse and Tully, then used those photos for the website.
When Eric played his last game at Brockport in 2014, I wasn’t sure about the future of RTD. What would I write about now? Fortunately, Brian started playing box lacrosse, traveling the world, and – just like that! – I had more material. And besides, I was coaching, reffing, going to Final Fours, and working at Lake Placid, as well as World Games in Denver, Syracuse, and Netanya. Road Trip Dad got new legs.
Meanwhile, Dennis invited me to join him and Chad Lynch for lunch in September 2016. The three of us talked for hours – all lacrosse, all the time. The outing became the topic of that week’s blog (“Three Lacrosse Fanatics Walk into a Bar…”).
The following winter, I found myself in Lakeland, Florida visiting my parents over February break, and figured I’d journey up to Jacksonville to check in on first-year head coach John Galloway and his assistant coach, Casey Powell. My idea expanded to the point where I wanted to stay overnight and see a practice as well as a game, so I reached out to my JustLacrosse employer and asked if he’d pay for a hotel for one night in order for me to get the story of two Upstate icons re-planted in The Sunshine State.
Without hesitation, Dennis gave me the green light.
It was Dennis who first planted the idea of a Road Trip Dad book in my mind. He casually mentioned something like, “Y’know, you could publish a collection of archived blogs if you want…”
Getting paid was one thing; publishing a book was another!
I took his idea and ran with it. I met up with a couple local authors who were self-published and picked their brains. In the fall of 2018, I published my very first book – The Best of Road Trip Dad – the Laker Lacrosse Collection, filled with some 44 blogs I’d written over the first six years about my experiences with the Oswego State men’s lacrosse program… and it was all Dennis’ idea. When I called a meeting of friends, former players and assistant coaches to map out the publishing plan, Dennis drove up to Oswego – in bad weather, no less – to join us.
In January of 2021, I published my second RTD collection (The Best of RTD – A Lacrosse Coach’s Handbook), and if things go right, I’ll have a third “Best of RTD” collection out by this November. With more than 500 RTD blogs in the archives, there could very well be more beyond that one.
NOTE: both Best of RTD books are available at amazon.com, along with my teaching memoir, …and piles to go before I sleep – the Book of Wit. Jus’ sayin.’
When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, and lacrosse – like just about everything else – came to a stop, Dennis knew he would lose his readership. There was little to no lacrosse news. We talked about whether I’d continue to write or not and, after a week or two, I decided I didn’t want to write ‘what to do during a pandemic’ blogs, so I took a break instead, promising readers that, when lacrosse returned, so would Road Trip Dad.
That hiatus ended up lasting 23 weeks, from March through September. As 9/11 approached, I decided it was time to make my comeback, and I re-posted my annual September 11 tribute. The following week, I had new lacrosse material, and I haven’t missed a week since.
But the downtime for JustLacrosse, and perhaps changing technology, combined with Dennis’ retirement and interests elsewhere, has caused the website to enter its final days. Dennis gave me fair warning, but then he gave me something else.
He helped me find a new home for RTD.
He did some research and came across the Substack.com option which, ironically, had already appeared on my radar thanks to Brian and some of his lacrosse-writing acquaintances. Dennis offered to seek out details, and he did more of the initiating work than I did. For the past two months or so, weekly RTD blogs have been made available on both Substack and JustLacrosse.com, and Dennis assures me that, as long as JustLacrosse.com is functional, he’ll continue to provide newcomers and latecomers alike links where they can find the blogs.
These days, I’m more likely to plan RTD pieces out ahead of time and not wait until Sunday to pick a topic. The “Heritage” series I stumbled upon in January of 2021 has me doing more research, making phone calls, and exchanging emails in preparation, but that’s a good thing. Despite the apparently improved planning, I often send my blogs to Dennis on Monday mornings now, instead of Sunday nights.
I believe the JustLacrosse.com website dates back to 2002, so kudos and congratulations to Dennis and his faithful readers for keeping it viable for 20 years. In my mind, his site was one of a kind for Upstate NY lacrosse people. I mean, SportsFive.net is awesome, but it’s not the same, and as great as it is with its Section V boys’ high school coverage, it’s more limited in its scope. InsideLacrosse.com is helpful, and LaxAllStars has some interesting writing, but JustLacrosse.com was Upstate’s lacrosse website.
I think it will be missed, but in an age of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, maybe websites in general are becoming obsolete. Just like the local Syracuse newspapers (yes, plural; there was a time when there was a morning paper and an afternoon paper!) used to have daily college and high school box scores – all on one page – you can no longer have that kind of information delivered to you every day. Instead, you have to pay for this or that, complete a survey, log in with a password, and spend time trying to find the right links to click.
So, thank you, Dennis – and thank you, JustLacrosse.com. You served us well.
Not just from me, but from all of us.
Thanks for reading. Please consider subscribing to roadtripdad.substack.com to receive weekly RTD pieces via email. It’s free – really! No fine print; no catches.
In the meantime, please drive carefully, everyone. Donate blood. Get vaccinated, and get your booster. Mask up if asked. Volunteer.
But most importantly, stay safe, stay smart, and stay kind.
- Dan Witmer
Thank you, Dennis Pettit and JustLacrosse.com
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