The Georgia Swarm today announced the hiring of five-time NLL champion Dan Ladouceur as an assistant coach.
Ladouceur spent the past four seasons as an assistant coach with Toronto and helped guide the Rock to a Champion’s Cup appearance in 2015. The Thunder Bay, Ontario native also spent 11 seasons (1999-2009) as a defenseman with Toronto where he won five championships and was highly regarded as one of the league’s toughest defenders with his 6-foot-6, 245-pound frame.
“We are very pleased to add both the coaching ability and character of Dan Ladouceur to our staff,” Swarm head coach Ed Comeau said. “He has experience in the NLL as a coach and has won two Minto Cups as an assistant coach with Whitby; he also won five championships as a player with the Toronto Rock. We believe this experience will help us further develop our team to achieve our ultimate goal of an NLL Championship.”
“I’m really excited about this opportunity. I’ve played for Eddie Comeau and I’ve known Sean Ferris ever since I started playing in Toronto,” Ladouceur said. “I have a lot of respect for Eddie and I love the way that he thinks and sees the game and how open his communication is. He approaches it with such professionalism but ensures there’s an element of fun. I wanted to be around that.”
Having both played and coached against the Swarm for a number of years, Ladouceur said he’s now looking forward to working with one of the most up-and-coming rosters in the NLL.
“It was a team that you knew was never going to quit and was absolutely chock-full of young legs and full of energy,” said Ladouceur in regards to competing against the Swarm. “And most recently obviously, it has an offense that will give you absolute fits when you look at it from a defensive perspective. The threats are evenly balanced on both the lefts and the rights in my opinion.”
Ladouceur, 42, will join fellow assistant coach Sean Ferris on the sidelines in 2017; former Georgia assistant coach Blane Harrison has retired from the NLL due to work commitments.
“We were very happy with the job that Blane did with our young offense last year,” Comeau said. “We had the second ranked offense in the league and Blane directed this group to play an exciting brand of lacrosse. We understand that work commitments will prevent him from returning next year.”
