Most financial advisors can’t say they’ve ever shown up at work on a Monday morning sporting a colourful shiner, but Derek Suddons can.

“It’s part of the game,” explains the 29-year-old, who is an advisor with Investors Group Inc. in Whitby, Ont. during the week and a professional lacrosse player on the weekends, taking and dishing out hits for the Toronto Rock of the National Lacrosse League.

But as bad as a black eye can be, Suddons says, it’s nothing compared to facing an office full of Rock fans after a team loss. “I have to explain why we didn’t win,” Suddons laughs. “I try to keep a low profile and bury my head in work those weeks.”

Suddons is certainly a busy man, juggling his responsibilities as an advisor with the demands of playing a professional sport. It works, he says, because he’s disciplined about time management.

“We practise on Wednesday evenings and play on Friday nights at home [at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre],” Suddons explains, “or travel Friday for a game on Saturday.”

The rest of the week is devoted to serving his book of roughly 110 clients, most of whom know about his other life as a pro athlete.

In the evenings, when Suddons isn’t at practice or playing, he calls on his clients, or prospective ones, usually at their homes to discuss their finances.

“The greatest part of this job is meeting people,” says Suddons, who started his career at Investors Group four and a half years ago. “You learn all these different stories, where they work, what makes them tick. That’s what makes it fun.”

The Toronto Rock plays a 16-game schedule in the thriving 12-team NLL. (Two other Canadian-based teams play in the league: the Edmonton Rush and the Calgary Roughnecks.) Salaries average about US$15,000, so players usually work a full-time job or go to school during the week. Suddons is in his fifth season with the Rock, after spending his first two in the NLL with the Columbus (Ohio) Landsharks, which have since relocated to Phoenix to become the Arizona Sting.

In 2004, Suddons jumped at the chance to move to the Rock and to be close to his hometown of Whitby, Ont., a town of about 110,000 located 50 kilometres east of downtown Toronto. “I wanted to stay closer to home,” he says, “while building my business.”

In 2005, his second season in Toronto, Suddons was part of the team that captured the Champion’s Cup, which is given to the NLL’s playoff winner. “It was a tremendous experience,” he says. “It was amazing to win it at home, in front of friends and family and the fans in Toronto.”

Suddons played a number of sports, including baseball, soccer, and hockey, while growing up in Whitby. When he was around 10 years old, Suddons discovered lacrosse after seeing a neighbourhood friend carrying around a lacrosse stick and ball. That piqued Suddons’ interest. “Eventually, I started throwing the ball around with him,” he says. “I fell in love with lacrosse and didn’t care too much for other sports after that.”

Following high school, Suddons got a scholarship to play field lacrosse in the U.S. at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. He transferred twice, looking for better lacrosse competition, and graduated four and a half years later from the University of Hartford with an economics degree.

Suddons had always wanted to pursue lacrosse professionally; box lacrosse, the indoor version of the game that’s played in the NLL, appeals to him.

“The game’s a lot quicker and there’s a lot more body contact because you’re in a reduced space,” he says, comparing box lacrosse to field lacrosse. Suddons says lacrosse is a momentum game, with a team able to go on scoring runs of five or six goals, but trailing teams are rarely out of it.

“If a team is down by three goals with two minutes left, the game is not over,” he says. “There’s still a chance to catch up or make it interesting.”

The growth in the pro game’s popularity — especially in Toronto — over the past seven or so years has been as surprising, and gratifying, to Suddons as it has been to others.

“The Rock has really built up a good fan base of around 8,000 season-ticket holders,” Suddons says. “And the fans understand the game more as a sport, in terms of what makes a good play, not only on offense but defence too.”

@page_break@A defenceman, the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Suddons is known as more of a defensive specialist than someone who jumps into the offensive play. Suddons plays a hard-nosed game and has dropped the gloves from time to time — when warranted.

“If someone challenges me, and I want to take him up on it, then so be it,” he says. “I’ve won some fights, I’ve lost some fights. It just comes with the sport.”

After graduation and while playing for Columbus, Suddons spent some time considering what career to pursue away from lacrosse. An interview with Investors Group in 2003 persuaded him of the merits of working as an advisor, giving him a chance to help people in his community work toward their financial goals.

“I want to help a client look at the full picture,” he says. “I want to make sure somebody’s financial plan is well rounded and realistic so that they know where they are now and what to expect five or 10 years down the road.”

Suddons acknowledges that he is still building his book of business and hopes to be serving roughly 200 clients in five years’ time. Although most of his clients today have modest assets ranging from $50,000 to $100,000, that isn’t a problem for the young advisor. “I’m not looking for a certain asset level [in new clients],” he says. “It’s more important to find clients who want to grow and build toward something.”

Suddons says he prefers to do his recruiting in the community at large through mailings, calls and events rather than recruiting in the lacrosse world; he prefers to keep the two worlds mostly separate. And Suddons, who has his mutual funds and insurance licences, says he tends to avoid mentioning his life as a pro athlete to new clients — at least, in the first few meetings. “I think people want to know you’re serious about your profession [first],” he explains.

Although Suddons tries to draw a line between lacrosse and his advisory business, he acknowledges that he does have a few clients on the Rock and a few on other teams in the league, mostly friends he grew up with. But when at the rink, Suddons says, he concentrates on lacrosse.

“They know if they want to talk to me, they can call me through the week. But I’ll never actively bring it up, for example, sitting beside a guy on the plane,” he says. “And everything is in complete confidence.”

Suddons feels a great sense of camaraderie with his fellow NLL players, three-quarters of whom are Canadian, with a great many hailing from southern Ontario. And Suddons is also the Rock’s representative on the Professional Lacrosse Players’ Association.

Suddons has received a lot of support from his colleagues at Investors Group in Whitby, with groups of fans coming down to see him play.

“It’s been great how they’ve supported me and the game,” he says. “And if I can, I’ll get something autographed for one of their kids or a client. If I have some old equipment, I’ll gladly give it up for a kid starting out in the game.”

Suddons is very community-minded and proud of his hometown of Whitby, where he was raised and where he now lives with his wife, Lisa, a teacher. Most of his clients also live in the area.

“Community is the biggest thing,” Suddons says. “One day, I’d like to be recognized primarily as a businessman who helped local families secure their financial future, and secondly as someone who once played lacrosse at a high level.” IE