Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Alumni/JV game was a great success!

It hurts to type this but I figure I should pound out this blog about the alumni/jv game last night at the ‘Catdome. We had about 30 alumni players that were able to make it last night but the old guys gave it their all last night and played a heck of a game versus the young ‘Cats and ran away with the 54-16 win. For me, the hours leading up to the game were pretty stressful. I was very worried about the weather (we already played one alumni game in a monsoon) and players not being able to make it during the final hours.

I arrived at the Catdome around 3pm and open up the visitor’s locker room. About 4 pm guys slowly started to trickle in. One of the fun parts of the event is over in the equipment room where guys search out their old number and find out if they can still even get the jersey to fit. You could see the memories wash over the alumni players as they start searching out for a certain style of shoulder pads and debate to try to fit in the large pants or move up the XL. My old numbers 11 fit very snugly around my mid-section but screw it; there was no jersey that was going to turn the clock back 10 years so I just went for it.

Another funny thing about the alumni game that I’ve noticed over the past few years is that it seems that the defensive players are typically the first ones to show up. I don’t know why and don’t know if it’s just a coincidence but it always seem that D-Line and LBs make up the bulk of the first arrivals. You could probably guess the last guys to typically show up….the O-Line guys.

As for the game itself, the weather turned out to be absolutely perfect and there was a decent turnout to support the new and old ‘Cats. The young kids took the early lead on an offensive turnover but after that the offense rolled up and down the field turf at the ‘Catdome. The defense guys were a little disappointed we gave up a TD but we felt pretty good about our old guy effort.

As much as I would like to write a paragraph about every player there I’ll just give a shout to all the boys: Drew Kehoe, Peter Gerber, Dwight Donaldson, Jeff York, Bryan Swanson, James Holan, Luke Buchheit, Brett Elliott, Carl Haberberger, Morty Kotler, Thomas Ford, Andy Jamison, Joe O’Neil, Brad McKechnie, George Carter, Brandon Hazenberg, Casey Allen, Mitch Chadwick, Mark Culbertson, Mike Ketler, Robert Acevedo, Nik Soo, Brandon Olson, Ryan Boatsman, Phil Rombach, Chris Boock, Phil Marr, JP Kloninger, and Ray Lions.

Allen Moody from the News-Register was very gracious to give the game pre and post coverage. Here is the link to the game article: Linfield alumni impressive one more time. Thanks Allen for the ink!

OK that is about all for me because I’m hurting more and more by the minute and I need to put my feet up and relax. I'll be getting my hands on some pictures in the near future and I'll be linking those up soon.

1 comment:

Claire said...

My son played in that game. He said it was a lot of fun even tho' the young'uns got thrashed!