For nearly four decades, Jim Veltman has been playing lacrosse.
He played minor and junior lacrosse growing up in Brampton, Ont., before moving on to senior lacrosse. He then had a long and distinguished career in the professional ranks, first with the Buffalo Bandits and finally the Toronto Rock.
He's played in the winter, spring, summer and fall. And in leading the Rock to five National Lacrosse League titles, he became the most accomplished team captain of any kind in Toronto in at least half a century.
But Sunday afternoon, when the Rock play host to the Philadelphia Wings in the team's regular-season finale, the curtain will fall on the 42-year-old's playing career.
"It's scary," he said. "I'm worried. I don't know if that's the word but I'm scared to think what life will be like without being able to go on the floor and do something about the game. I'm scared of how I'll respond, scared mentally and physically. I've got a bit of a transition to go through here."
The Rock also were scared when they learned last summer that Veltman had been offered the head coaching job of the Colorado Mammoth, one of the NLL's marquee franchises.
Mammoth management flew Veltman and his wife to Denver, wined and dined them and made their pitch. But when the Rock came through with a five-year contract that included one more year of playing, followed by four years as the team's co-coach, he decided to stay put.
"The Rock really stepped up," he said. "I always knew I wanted to be a coach and Toronto had hinted they wanted me to be a part of the organization past my playing days."
The notion of spending a good part of his life in pro lacrosse seemed unimaginable when Veltman was growing up, since in those days the game's best players showcased their skills exclusively in small arenas during summer months when often friends and family were the only ones watching.
When the Bandits joined the fledgling professional lacrosse circuit in the early 1990s, Veltman came on board for five seasons. The team won three league titles before he and his wife took leave of their teaching jobs to do humanitarian work in Africa.
While he was away, a new team was being hatched in Hamilton. Faxes started showing up in Uganda asking that Veltman come home to play for the team, known as the Ontario Raiders.
Playing professionally in his home country seemed too good to be true. And for a while, it looked like that might be the case.
"That first year we struggled attendance-wise, getting four to six thousand fans and you had this feeling it wasn't going to last," Veltman said.
A year later, the Raiders franchise was reborn as the Toronto Rock and Veltman took on the role of central player. Veltman and the Rock captured five league titles in seven seasons and the Toronto physical-education teacher became a household name among Southern Ontario's fervent lacrosse faithful.
Lacrosse players don't get into their sport for glory or the public profile. Veltman didn't go looking for those things. They just sort of found him.
"I never imagined the Toronto Rock," he said. "I never imagined the Buffalo Bandits. And back when we started selling out in Buffalo, never did I imagine it could happen in Toronto."
Throughout his professional career, Veltman kept playing in the summer leagues, wining three Mann Cup titles with the Brampton Excelsiors and a final one with the Victoria Shamrocks in 2003, before spending the past few years playing Senior B lacrosse. And he also kept up his charitable work, which included being an athletic ambassador for Right To Play, an athlete-driven international humanitarian organization.
"He's one of those guys who's not replaceable," Rock president Brad Watters said. "He's been the face of the franchise for 10 years and the cornerstone of our organization."
Sunday's finale will feature tributes to Veltman from, among others, Ontario Lieutenant-Governor David Onley, and charitable auctions to fund a project initiated by Veltman to bring lacrosse equipment and teaching to the Northern Ontario native community of Attawapiskat.
It is a fitting ending to a career that began when a young kid chose a sport of his homeland over one of his heritage.
"I'm from a Dutch immigrant family and my Dad's first love was soccer," he said. "He enrolled me in soccer and lacrosse but after a few years there were so many conflicts [and] he said, 'You have to choose.' To his disappointment I chose lacrosse. But if I asked him today he'd say it was the right choice."
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