Mark WiedmerWould you agree to an expenses-only job that would require you to take a 16-hour flight from Chattanooga by way of Atlanta to coach a women's lacrosse team that's almost sure to struggle mightily in an international tournament?
You would if you were Girls Preparatory School athletic director and lacrosse coach Jay Watts and you'd been selected to pretty much oversee the formation of the Polish Women's National Lacrosse team, whose first big competition - the 22nd annual Prague Cup - is being held this week in Prague, Czech Republic.
"It's fun and a great learning experience for me," said Watts, who won nine state girls' lacrosse championships at Westminster in Atlanta before taking over the Bruisers' athletic department a couple of years ago.
"Plus, I think it makes me a better coach here at GPS."
It all started in fall 2017 with Watts applying online for the Polish gig. He was hired in February 2018 and made his first trip to Poland last summer. He returned there in March.
He'll fly out of Chattanooga on Monday, meeting his team in Prague, where it will practice on Wednesday and play in the 10-team tourney that runs Thursday through Saturday.
And if this international coaching experiment doesn't work out, Watts might consider moonlighting as a travel agent in the future.
"Tickets from Atlanta were pretty pricey," he said. "It was like $1,600 on Delta. And that's without checking a bag. For some reason, at the last minute I decided to check out what a flight from Chattanooga would cost. To my amazement it was $600 less, you could check your bag and I'll be on the same flight out of Atlanta to Prague that would have cost me $600 more if I hadn't flown out of Chattanooga. It's crazy."
You could say that crazy is thinking you can take a team that's never played competitive lacrosse on a world stage until the Prague Cup and have it ready for the Women's Lacrosse World Cup in Baltimore in 2021. But that's Watts' goal, at least if he can find the funding to get his team across the pond to Maryland.
"If it was next year, we might have problems," he said. "But I'm hoping we can raise the money we need over the next two years."
How much trouble has money been thus far for the Polish team?
"We got someone to donate a crate of 100 lacrosse balls, which was wonderful," Watts said. "But by the time we paid shipping and taxes, including taxes in Poland, the cost was over $250."
Then there are the lacrosse sticks, which can run anywhere from $25 to more than $100 apiece.
"If you watch one of our games (the first will come against the Netherlands at 5 a.m. EDT on Thursday), you'll see many of our women play with sticks that have 'Canada' printed on them," Watts said, "because the Canadian women left a lot of them on the field after a game and our players went and got them."
Everything has a beginning. When Watts agreed to take on this assignment more than a year ago, he had no idea what he was getting into. He'd never been to Poland, though he had witnessed the Women's Lacrosse World Cup on an earlier trip to Europe.
But after two trips there in the past 11 months, he is more excited than ever to see his 15-woman roster compete against some of the better teams in Europe, as well as an all-star team from the United States.
"I've gotten to know the players who are competing relatively well," Watts said. "They all speak English. There's one U.S. player on the roster, a rising junior at St. Francis University whose grandparents are from Poland, so she qualified for the team.
"What's really impressed me is their eagerness to learn a sport that's not native to that area. Most don't start playing until their 20s. We have one 32-year-old who's been playing three years."
It's important to note that the players pay their own way. According to Watts, the team couldn't compete in the European lacrosse championship in July in Israel because "it's just too expensive."
The international game is also different from the one he's coached in the States. Only 10 players are on the field for one side while 12 take the field on each side in the U.S. However, exactly like the American game, no helmets are required.
"You can have six on the offensive side of the field, and I've joked that if they ever drop that number to five I could bring out some of my old basketball plays," said Watts, who coached girls' basketball both at Westminster and during his first year at GPS.
The thrill of competition, of building a team from scratch, isn't all that he's enjoyed about his part-time job in Poland.
"First, it's a beautiful country," Watts said. "The history, the architecture. I saw a thousand-year-old church the first time I went there. And the people are incredibly nice and welcoming. It's one of the safest countries in Europe. It's become my adopted country. Whenever they're competing in something, I pull for them."
Most of us never get to be the first to do anything. But Watts could be the first coach to take a Polish women's lacrosse team to the World Cup.
"Lacrosse is giving (Polish) women a different option," he said. "And they can be on a competitive national team very quickly."
And thanks to his research of airline tickets, Watts just may have found a different, cheaper option for Chattanoogans to fly to Europe. Now if he could just find a way for them to avoid the Atlanta airport altogether.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.
GPS athletic director Jay Watts coaches the school's basketball team during a game in January 2018. Watts will use his skills as a lacrosse coach to lead Poland's women's national team.