The Halfway Point

With four down and four to go the Catamounts stand at 3-1 and in first place in the Western Division of the Northeast Independent Football League. Not a bad start considering this is a first-year team that's still learning to play together. But learn we did this past weekend at Worcester State College.

As we entered the weekend against the Mass Fury, the team was quietly confident, but the coaches were very nervous. Sometimes coaches have to walk a very thin line during the week of preparation for a solid opponent. On one hand, you want your players to buy into the gameplan and feel that they are prepared to take on the other team and win the game without being too cocky. On the other hand, you want to talk honestly about how good the opposition is without giving the players the feeling that they have no chance at all.

I think we had a good gameplan in place and we said all the right things during the week. When the game started, it couldn't have gone better for us with two long drives into Mass Fury territory. But the Fury answered each drive in kind and it really was a beautiful thing to watch. They never got nervous or anxious; they just went back to work and methodically picked us apart. There's a swagger about the Fury that you just can't see on film.

I'm proud of my team for the way they played, but I'm not sure anyone could have beaten the Fury on Sunday. They made no mistakes and seemed to be firing on all cylinders. We may have thrown the first really hard punch, but they delivered the knockout blow.

I hope we learned a few lessons from the Fury on Sunday: how to play as a team, how to stay composed, and how to impose your will on a game. Our goal from this point onward is to earn the right to face the Fury again: in the Championship Game. By then, I hope we'll be able to show them what we've learned.