NLL Insider

Jeff Dowling (Photo: Dave Sanders)

Former San Jose Stealth head coach, Jeff Dowling, definitely was hoping recent moves made by his former team would spark the club to a turnaround, unfortunately for Dowling, it appears the Stealth brass was looking for a more dramatic spark.

If you still haven’t heard, almost three weeks ago, the Stealth demoted Dowling from his head coaching position, paving the way for Chris Hall, who at the time was one of the team’s assistant coaches, to take over for Dowling, who was kept on staff while taking Hall’s previous assistant position on the Stealth bench.

Approximately a week later, Dowling made the decision to step down from his assistant coaching position, with the Stealth promoting Joe Romano as the team’s offensive coordinator.

“It’s disappointing that things didn’t work out for me in San Jose,” Dowling told NLL Insider over the weekend. “I had high hopes and understand that at 3-7 something had to be done to spark the team.”

Over the off-season the Stealth made a flurry of moves which saw such players as All-Star keeper Anthony Cosmo, Luke Wiles, Gary Rosyski, Paul Dawson, Tim Booth and Steve Panarelli either dealt or released, while current starting keeper Matt Roik and a handful of rookies garnered through last year’s entry draft were brought aboard. Rhys Duch, Alex Turner, Paul Rabil and the still unsigned Kevin Huntley were some of the higher profile rookies the Stealth picked up.

As Dowling, who won a Champion’s Cup with the Buffalo Bandits last year, stated above, the team sat at 3-7 and slightly outside of the Western playoff picture when the move to swap himself and Hall was made. Although the Stealth currently sit a half point out of the last post-season birth in the West, the team has gone 2-1 over the past two weekends with wins over Edmonton and Portland, dropping the first game of their doubleheader with the Lumberjax this past week.

“I had hoped adding three experienced defenders was going to be enough,” added Dowling in regards to regaining an unsigned Shaydon Santos at the trade deadline and getting back a healthy Steve Holmes and eventually Travis Gillespie, “but ultimately they made a change to the coaching staff as well.”

Even though no longer on the Stealth bench, Dowling still feels that the team could make an impressive run come playoff time, saying, “I wish them all the best and if Matt (Roik) can get them going they will be hard to beat in the playoffs.”

Plus the links

• Stealth keep playoff hopes alive with win over Portland: San Jose Stealth
• “Wounded animal, they were, ” Jax coach/general manager Derek Keenan said of the Stealth. “And we talked about, but … you get an opportunity to put them down and we didn’t. They just outplayed us. The bottom line, they were better.”: OregonLive.com
• Sweet behind the scenes and in-game photo stream from Stealth v. Jax game: NLL Insider
• Riggers search for motivation: The Calgary Sun
• 9 Minutes of Lacrosse with Paul Rabil: Inside Lacrosse
• OLA Jr. B loop joins A’s on pointstreak for stats home: The Windsor Star
• Changes should make Celtics stronger: Standard Freeholder
• Shamrock sign Ontario keeper imports Adam Hickey and Greg Krstic: BC Local News
• OLA axes four games on Sr. B sked: The Sun Times

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