everytime i create more than one player then enter an association, my game freezes after loading drills. i.e. says drill is loading, then goes black and stays that way until i reset ps2.

any ideas what is causing this?

yes its a bug and I discovered how to fix this.
You have to turn the music off because I think this causes the loading screen to freeze.

Turn your music off and see if it still freezes. You might want to save every after drill just in case it freezes even if the music was off.