Hills East Alum Pushing New Lax Product

It’s been almost 30 years since they played against each other on the lacrosse field, but the game they both love has brought Jim Metzger and Tom Rotanz together again.

Metzger, a former standout lacrosse player at Half Hollow Hills East, Navy Prep and Hofstra, has partnered with Tom Rotanz, a Ward Melville and Adelphi lacrosse icon and veteran coach at Shoreham-Wading River, to help lacrosse players improve their game with the advent of The Power Shaft.

The lacrosse training tool is a weighted lacrosse stick shaft that allows players to perfect their game, hand and arm speed, shot speed and overall strength with stick checks, face-off draws and other areas of specific reflex and movement.

“When I played against Tom it always was fierce competition,” said Metzger, the CEO of The Whitmore Group, a leading insurance services and estate planning company based in Garden City, “but we always had respect and admiration for each other on and off the field. This time we are on the same team, and it is exciting that we can work together to help today’s lacrosse players improve their games.”

The Power Shaft is available in three position-related lengths that conform to any lacrosse head. The attack/midfielder shaft for men and women is 30 inches. The weight varies from 2.2 pounds solid to four pounds with a shaft insert. For men only, it is available in a goalie shaft (40 inches and weight of 2.8 pounds solid and 5.1 pounds shaft insert) and the defensive shaft (60 inches and weight of 4.4 pounds solid and 7.8 pounds for shaft insert).

“Jim was always coming at you as a player, and I can see he took his lacrosse lessons into the business world,” said Rotanz, who was an All-American at Ward Melville and Adelphi. “Once we became reacquainted and caught up on what has occurred over the last three decades, he took an immediate liking to the training tool that I had developed. He came right at me as if we were on the field again.”

Metzger, who earned the as Suffolk County’s top lacrosse player in 1977, has invested in marketing and distribution of The Power Shaft, which is available at Port Jefferson Sporting Goods in Port Jefferson Station and Olympic Den in Franklin Square and Lake Ronkonkoma. It also is sold in Canada (Long Stick Middies in British Columbia) and online at Lax.com. The Swiss National Team is among the users of The Power Shaft.