Rebuilding
On June 10, 2009, the Rock announced that former GM and coach Terry Sanderson had been brought back as the new GM. Jamie Batley was also told by the Rock that he would not be returning as head coach,. At the end of the month, the league announced that the Rock had been sold to Oakville-based businessman James Dawick. Two weeks later, former Calgary Roughnecks head coach Troy Cordingley was named as the new coach, giving the Rock an entirely new staff from ownership on down.
Sanderson wasted no time in the rebuilding efforts, most notably re-acquiring Colin Doyle from Washington in exchange for Lewis Ratcliff, Tyler Codron and Joel Dalgarno. He also traded Luke Wiles to Washington and Bill McGlone to Philadelphia, and re-acquiring former Rock defender Sandy Chapman from Rochester. He then traded team captain Chris Driscoll to the Buffalo Bandits for another former Rock defender Phil Sanderson, and acquired Mike Hominuck from Edmonton and Pat McCready from Buffalo, both for draft picks.
The moves paid off immediately, as the Rock began the 2010 season 6-1 on route to a 9-7 record. This was good for second place in the East and the Rock's first playoff berth in four years. In the playoffs, the Rock defeated Buffalo and Orlando on their way to their seventh Championship game, and first since 2005. The Washington Stealth, in their first season in Everett, Washington, proved too strong for the Rock and won the Championship 15-11.
In 2011, the Rock found themselves in the Championship game for the second straight year against the Washington Stealth, this time winning 8-7.
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Famous quotes containing the word rebuilding:
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)