Gloves Off: Jordan MacIntosh

The National Lacrosse League is home to the best box lacrosse players in the world. They are at the top of their game, put on stellar athletic performances and have diehard, competitive attitudes. 

With lacrosse action suspended until the pandemic has subsided, NLL players have been missing the game fiercely. Thankfully, they have stayed busy in their day-to-day lives. They’ve spent more time with friends and family, honed different types of skills, and remained grounded during this tumultuous moment in history. 

Gloves Off is a 13-installment series that peels back the layers of our athletes to uncover more about their lifestyle and personal lives, learning about their hobbies, passions and more, with the goal of making them inherently more relatable to their fans. 

Jordan MacIntosh is one busy man. When the Georgia Swarm captain isn’t corralling his teammates for a Zoom catch-up, he’s working as the Director of Sales for the software company Robin. And when he’s not doing that, he’s fixing up the Airbnb he and his wife Emily are renting out.

Who opens a business in the middle of a pandemic? A man with dreams and an eye to the future, that’s who.

It’s something they had been talking about doing for a long time. The pandemic was actually the impetus for making it happen, MacIntosh says.

“We wanted to make something cool that people could enjoy. We’ll come down on my off weekends from the NLL and PLL and hopefully long down the road when I retire we’ll get to use it more.”

The cabin is located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. When they purchased it last October, “it was standing up, I’ll say,” MacIntosh chuckles. They started making fixes in January and will be working right up until the house goes up for rent on Memorial Day weekend.

MacIntosh says it’s an ideal getaway spot.

“Berkshire County is in the western most part of the state, and it’s made up of a lot of small towns. There are a lot of outdoor activities out here, great food and music. It’s a big-time destination for people from both Boston and New York, who are trying to get out of the city for a weekend.”

The cabin itself is only 10 minutes outside of town, making it easy for people to run in for essentials or have a night out at a local restaurant. Or, they can get active and go skiing or hiking. The cabin itself is secluded making it the perfect getaway spot.

The couple took on everything themselves except the heating and septic system, preferring to hire professionals for those. They gutted the kitchen, installed new hardwood floors and renovated the four bedrooms on their own. Decorating was easy since they share a similar style, and they took some inspiration from Pinterest and home décor magazines.

They’ve already started advertising – the couple has been chronicling their project with an Instagram account run by Emily. It has a woodsy, folksy feel, inspired by the backdrop of Monument Mountain, Long Pond and the local wildlife.

“The black bears in this area are prevalent,” MacIntosh says. “I caught a bear on the front door camera. He was close enough to have knocked on it! He kept coming and knocking over the trash cans looking for food once he came out of hibernation.”

There’s plenty of gentler wildlife too, like deer, foxes and rabbits, which is a change from the hustle and bustle of their Boston apartment life. They’ll continue to live in Boston and let a local property management company handle the day-to-day business of the cabin like greeting guests and cleaning after each visitor.

MacIntosh, an Oakville, Ontario native has called Boston home for the last seven years, moving there with Emily after he graduated from RIT. Emily is from Rochester; the pair wanted to live somewhere between New York and Boston, close enough to visit their families.

They narrowly avoided being stranded in Europe when COVID hit; they were at the airport ready to go on vacation when the United States closed the borders. The missed getaway has been on their minds.

It’s been a relief to have something to put their energy into, and to work on the cabin together.

“We’ve been together 10 years and it’s probably the most consecutive time we’ve spent together in our lives,” he says, due to his hectic lacrosse schedule.

During the early part of the pandemic, MacIntosh kept in shape, hoping for a resumption to the NLL season. He did play in the summer PLL tournament, but other than that they just caught up on a lot of TV shows, had game nights and lots of Zoom calls with friends and family.

“I miss my teammates more than anything,” MacIntosh says wistfully. “There’s nothing like playing and I got a little taste of it last summer in the PLL, but box lacrosse is a completely different beast. It’s been 16 months and I miss the game, but my teammates are what I’m most excited for.”

He misses the comradery of it all – even just the simple things like going to practice or eating breakfast together.