What Happens to Bear’s Lacrosse Team?

If you have any experience with Wall Streeters, you know that these are the most competitive people you’ll ever meet. With the decline and fall of Bear Stearns, we now must ask what will happen to its lacrosse team.

Among the remaining questions hanging over Bear Stearns Cos. is this: What happens to its lacrosse team?
On ultracompetitive Wall Street, lacrosse-loving traders are keenly watching the fate of the battered firm’s squad. Bear Stearns vanquished rival Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in triple overtime and then upset Credit Suisse First Boston last summer to win bragging rights in the Street’s inaugural Gotham Lacrosse tournament.
“I had a couple buddies [at Bear Stearns] who gave me a hard time,” says Chad Burdette, Trinity College ’06, who is now at Lehman’s private investment-management division and is the Lehman team’s informal manager. “I guess I got the last laugh now,” he jokes.
Lacrosse, a contact sport in which players fling a rubber ball from a net attached to the end of a stick, long has been part of Wall Street’s culture. It’s popular in the New York area and at many prep schools and Ivy League colleges. According to one old joke, the only way to get a job on Wall Street is to have high test scores or play lacrosse.
“Specifically with lacrosse, people hiring on Wall Street have a lot of respect for athletes,” says Bear Stearns’s Pete LeSueur, Johns Hopkins ’05 and an Academic All-American. “There’s definitely a strong correlation between being able to handle pressure as a trader and being able to handle pressure as an athlete.”

Posted by on April 4th, 2008 at 10:31 am


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