Inspired by coaches’ law enforcement experience, Wings will honor local heroes at Saturday’s game
Paul Day spent 27 years in law enforcement, and Ian Rubel is still on the force back in Canada.
The National Lacrosse League is filled with players and coaches who have careers serving their communities.
On Saturday, the Philadelphia Wings will honor local heroes when they take on the New England Black Wolves at 7 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Center. Fans attending the game will be able to submit names of their heroes, which will appear on the video board during the game.
Two of the people who helped inspire the idea are Paul Day, Wings general manager and head coach, and Ian Rubel, the team’s defensive coach. Both have worked in law enforcement.
Day spent 27 years on the Niagara Regional Police force in Canada before retiring in 2017 to run the Wings. When he was growing up in Peterborough, Ontario, he had aspirations of becoming a teacher. That changed when he ran into an old hockey teammate who had just retired from pro hockey and decided to become a police officer.
At the time, Day was playing professional lacrosse but was unsure of his day job. He knew he wanted to do something centered around a “team,” so he asked his friend what it was like being a cop.
“He said, ‘It’s like being on a team,' " said Day. "[I] Looked into it a little further and did the testing and never really looked back.
"Every day you are going to work with teammates. Obviously, it’s different. It’s life and death sometimes ... not so much wins and losses, but you are going in with that mindset as a unit every night.”
Day isn’t the only one in his family who’s served in law enforcement. His wife has been a police officer for more than two decades.
“When I’m at home sometimes, for Christmas, she’s at work," he said of her sacrifice for her job. " ... It’s pretty important to honor people like that every day. People come up and thank you all the time. I come up and thank people all the time, even though I was involved.”
Rubel became a police officer after his NLL playing career, when he was 30. He said he knew he wanted to help people after his retirement, and seeing how many folks within the lacrosse community worked in law enforcement was all the nudging he needed.
Rubel became an officer later in life, and said it was the perfect timing. If he had tried to become a police officer in his twenties, he said, he wouldn’t have been as successful.
He has served on the Niagara Regional Police force for 11 years and said the most exciting part of the job is not knowing what awaits.
“You get a call for service and you never know what you’re walking into," said Rubel, who works as an internet crime detective. “Every call is different.”
Day thinks former athletes people who work well in groups make the best police officers. He spent the later parts of his career as a recruiting sergeant hiring student-athletes to the force.
Being a former athlete also helped Day with the discipline to do the job. Sometimes he had to work a 12-hour shift that did not include a lunch break.
“There are a lot of similarities between sports and working for the police service,” he said. “Following direction -- that’s big. I think that’s a lot of similarities between any sport.”
Saturday will be the first time the Wings will face their former franchise, the Black Wolves. The original Wings team relocated to Connecticut in 2014.