They are reminded of their commitment to Major League Lacrosse every day.
Craig Kahoun thinks of his Indianapolis home, where he hasn't slept for a good portion of the summer, and the 11-hour car ride he will occasionally take with his brother so the two can make the Rochester Rattlers' practice on a Friday and play in a game a day later.
For Bayhawks midfielder Kip Fulks, it is the alarm clock that drives him out of bed about 5:30 a.m. and onto a lacrosse field before he begins his 8 a.m.-to-7 p.m. workday as the vice president of manufacturing at an apparel company.
Perhaps, though, the reality hits Boston Cannons defenseman Brian Voelker the hardest. Voelker, the newly named coach at the University of Pennsylvania, coached the Bayhawks last season but resigned and was assigned by the league to the Cannons days later. He can see Ravens Stadium, home of his old team, from his Federal Hill apartment, which he shares with his wife and two sons, 2 1/2 years and 9 months old.
"The other day, my son put on my helmet and all my equipment and said, 'I'm going to play lacrosse. I'll be home tomorrow.' I said, 'Whoa,' " recalled Voelker.
Welcome to the 2-year-old MLL, for which one of the biggest challenges is its ability to survive being a secondary employer for many of its athletes.
Nearly a third of the league's 150 players face one-way trips of 150 miles or more to get to their home venues. Twelve players live outside the Northeast - where all six franchises are located.
The players will say the travel can be brutal physically and the time spent away from home can wear on them mentally. Several also bemoan the problems practice and game schedules pose for their full-time jobs.
But players say those problems diminish when compared with the responsibility they hold in helping the league grow and the fun they have.
"Whenever I'm really tired and I start to feel sorry for myself, I remember this is all my doing, all my choice," said the Rattlers' Kahoun, who juggles his MLL career with a job as lacrosse coach at Butler University in Indianapolis.
"Every weekend, I'm making another flight, but if I didn't do this, I would have that what-if syndrome for quite a while. Growing up, nobody thought we'd have this opportunity, so to play anywhere is just a great experience."
Said Bayhawks defenseman Brian Reese: "A couple of years ago, we had nothing, so we take what they give us and are thankful for what we have. These sacrifices are ones you have to make."
The juggling act
The league, which runs for three months over the summer and whose regular season ends today, maintains a pay scale of $7,500 to $30,000 a year. The salaries are higher than those in the indoor National Lacrosse League but still not substantial enough to allow most players to live without a primary job.
"We schedule all games from Thursday to Sunday, so that speaks volumes," said Tim Shea, the director of lacrosse operations for the league. "We certainly have travel restrictions, and we work to accommodate players' primary employment."
For Fulks, that job is at Under Armour, a Baltimore-based athletic apparel company that is an official supplier of Major League Baseball and the NHL.
"The hardest part is the work ethic you have to put in to make sure you are competitive," said Fulks, 29, who helped start Under Armour in 1995. "I try to be out the door at 6 a.m. to work out, but it gets tiring. I've debated a retirement tour, but this game is so hard to give up."
Fulks missed a practice this season because of a business trip to California, but his work schedule rarely interferes with Bayhawks games. And for someone whose paycheck reads "Employee 001" as one of the company's founders, it's not as if Fulks couldn't sidestep a few conflicts.
Bayhawks teammate Rob Shek and Bridgeport Barrage attackman Dan Denihan don't have that luxury.
Shek, 33, is a Mid-Atlantic medical representative for Proxima Therapeutics - a company that develops and markets cancer treatment systems for brain tumors. En route to Ravens Stadium earlier this season, he was forced to call Bayhawks player-coach Gary Gait and get his name scratched from the lineup.
Shek had been summoned to York Hospital in Pennsylvania to be a medical consultant for a brain surgery.
"Unfortunately, you're at the mercy of the surgical schedule, but I was ready to play," said Shek.
Denihan, 25, has a television sales job with the Manhattan-based company TeleRep. To get to weekday games or practices on time, he is often forced to ask his boss if he can duck out early.
"Trust me, it's no fun," he said.
Planes, trains ...
Denihan made the All-Star team with the Bayhawks last season, but, unable to make the commute to Baltimore from his Manhasset, N.Y., home, he asked for a trade.
Last year's train ride, a six-hour round trip that often forced Denihan to change clothes in a Baltimore Penn Station lavatory before returning to Long Island about 3 a.m., has been cut in half, now that his destination is New Canaan, Conn.
The Bayhawks' roster is made up mostly of players who live in Maryland or Washington. Among them is goalie Greg Cattrano, who quit his job as a finance manager with BMG Entertainment in New York after last season and has moved to Towson while working exclusively in lacrosse-related jobs.
But the Bayhawks are clearly the minority. Most of the league's players put their faith in planes and public transportation.
Bridgeport attackman Todd Eichelberger flies in from California every week. Teammate Jim Gonnella arrives from Chicago. Rochester midfielder Steve Bishko comes east from South Bend, Ind., and teammates Matt Hahn, who lives in Baltimore, and John Fay, a Virginia resident, usually carpool. Lizards attackman Greg McCavera avoids the traffic altogether, by taking the train from Arlington, Va., to Long Island, N.Y.
Boston and Rochester have the most players commuting in to play. In most cases, teams meet for practice the night before games, and then travel as a team to road games.
"These players are making significant sacrifices to play in this league, and we don't make light of it at all," said Shea, who stated that players receive a stipend covering 50 to 75 percent of travel costs.
Voelker's trip from his home in Baltimore is a one-hour flight into either Manchester Airport in New Hampshire or Boston's Logan Airport, followed by a 20-minute cab ride to the Cannons' Cawley Stadium in Lowell, Mass.
The weekly trip has not been without its share of turbulence. Three times, his lacrosse stick has been temporarily lost by airlines.
"I've learned to travel with the bare minimum. I now leave most of my equipment in Boston, and I check my stuff in before," said Voelker, 32, whose new job at Penn leaves his MLL future uncertain.
Rochester's Jake Bergey and Brian Dougherty, both of whom live in Pennsylvania, have developed a simple formula to determine whether they fly or make a six-hour drive.
"If we can't get something for under 400 bucks round-trip, then we make the trip by car," said Bergey, a former Salisbury State star who now plays for the Rattlers, the indoor Philadelphia Wings and is part owner of a Mexican restaurant in West Chester, Pa. "A couple of times, we've gotten some good deals, but nobody seems to have a cheap flight to Rochester."
Bergey's teammate, Kahoun, often forgoes the Internet in favor of a travel agent, who has the difficult task of melding Kahoun's playing and recruiting schedules.
"With all the recruiting we do out of the Midwest, an eight- to 10-hour bus ride is nothing," Kahoun said. "I'd be here [in the Northeast] anyway to recruit."
During one 14-day stretch earlier this summer, Kahoun flew from Indianapolis to Rochester twice, from Rochester Airport to New York's LaGuardia Airport once, from Harrisburg, Pa., to Detroit once and endured bus rides from Rochester to Hershey, Pa., and then to Bridgewater, N.J. The finale was a 5 a.m. flight out of Newark, N.J., a trip he made with his brother Cory, a Rattlers midfielder.
Why so early? Craig was getting married the next day, and Cory was his best man.
A day after the wedding, Craig was back on a plane - this time with his wife and a Caribbean destination.
"For me, it's not a matter of being tired," Kahoun, 28, said. "I just got married, and I'd like to see my wife."
League goals
Players insist that the real toll of the league's daunting travel is best shown by the loss of Mike Law, Sean Radebaugh and MLL Defenseman of the Year Rob Doerr, who are not playing a second season because of conflicts with their jobs.
Doerr played in the first five games for the Bayhawks before he was called into the New York Police Academy.
"It was a long process, and it just came up real quickly, and unfortunately, right in the middle of the season," said Doerr, whose playing rights have since been traded to Bridgeport. "When you're at the academy, you are not allowed to have another income, and even if you could, there is no way I could do both. I am out the door by 4:30 in the morning and don't get home until 5.
He added: "I love lacrosse, but this is my career. I will definitely be playing again next year, and I can't wait."
Jake Steinfeld, the "Body by Jake" fitness entrepreneur who owns the league, has said from the outset that the league's goal is for the players' MLL salaries to be their primary income.
Inconsistent attendance for some franchises apparently has done little to dampen his enthusiasm. Steinfeld has all but guaranteed that two franchises will be added by next summer.
"These players have the best of both worlds," said Bridgeport general manager Ken Paul. "They are intelligent and career-motivated, and they still find the fire in their belly to play lacrosse at the highest level. Is there any bigger way to demonstrate their love of the game than to do what they are doing?"