The Conservative Cat

« A Slight Problem with Photographic Composition | Main | It's Oil-Bashing Time Again »

May 20, 2008

Force Football - A Complicated Weekend With Women's Tackle Football

The school year is coming to an end, and this means there are a lot of band concerts involving The Girl, who is a serious french horn player. One of them started an hour before the kickoff of last Saturday's Chicago Force football game against the Wisconsin Warriors. Thankfully, it was a home game, so when the concert ended Bruce was able to get to the stadium before it was over. In fact, he got there just as the second half started.

Bruce takes notes during the game so that I can report on what happened. If he's early, this is not a problem, but if the game's already under way he needs to find a seat immediately to avoid missing a play. As a result, he ended up in a section of the stadium heavily populated with Warrior fans. Warrior fans are nice people, but Bruce feels creepy shouting PUSH EM BACK while surrounded by people hoping for a touchdown. A life-long Chicago Cubs fan, Bruce has never really had to worry before about the visiting fans having a bad time. The Force is a completely different experience.

The game was scoreless during the first half. Bruce's theory is that they didn't want him to miss anything, but I suspect it had more to do with both teams having good defense. But once he sat down, the Force offense began to get in the groove. On the second play of the half, veteran running back Melissa Smith got a first down. Giving the ball to Melissa Smith is a common Force technique, because she's really hard to stop. For example, in the following play she advanced five yards with a Warrior player holding on to her right leg. With 5 to go on a second down, the Warriors decided to attack Melissa with everything they had, but quarterback Sam Grisafe had faked the handoff and ran all the way into the end zone for a touchdown. Sadly, it was immediately negated by a penalty.

Bruce tried to hold back tears while all the people sitting around him had a really good time.

The ball went back and forth a few more times, but eventually Smith got the ball close to the goal. With a first down on the Warriors' 1 yard line, newcomer Brandi Srda took the ball across the goal line for the game's only touchdown. The Force converted the ball for two more points.

The Warriors tried hard. With three minutes left they drove from the 50 yard line to the Force's 23, but were unable to get any closer. The final score was 8 to 0 for the Force, continuing their undefeated streak for the season.

The Force are officially 5-0 for the season, even though they've only played four games. The fourth game was a forfeit by the Columbus Phantoms. Four Phantom players and one coach were injured in an automobile accident on April 4. This, coupled with problems getting stadium space, have forced them to drop out of the league for the time being.

At the after party, the big question for Bruce was Where is Peg-Eye Nate? Nate drives a delivery van for a candy wholesaler, and had accumulated enough traffic tickets that he was sentenced to a day of Chicago Traffic Safety School. Though he's only had his license for a few years, Nate has put in a lot of time behind the wheel and is a skilled professional. As a result, he gets a lot more tickets than Bruce, who has limited depth perception and considers the operation of a motor vehicle to be an experiment in blind terror. Bruce rarely exceeds the speed limit, but he does get pulled over a lot for suspicion of drunk driving. Illinois has an "alert driver" standard, so instead of making you breathe into a tube, they ask you to recite the alphabet backwards. Bruce has dyslexia, so reciting the alphabet backwards is actually easier for him than doing it forwards. Eventually, the local police figured out that the slow progress and the constant lane changes were because when it's dark, every car looks to Bruce as if it's only a few lengths away. There's no law against that, yet.

The upshot is that the worst driver in the state has a clean record, but Nate had to spend game day learning the rules of the road.

Next Saturday (05/24/08) the Force will be playing the Iowa Crush on the road. They will be back home again on May 31st to face the Clarksville Fox. The Gremlin will be in Chicago that weekend, so if you're near Holmgren Field on 3pm Saturday, it will be your chance to meet my all-time favorite human. Don't miss the chance, because The Gremlin is a truly unique individual.

Just be sure you don't accidentally sit next to the visiting team's fans. Bruce doesn't want them to have a bad time.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Tue 1:34 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Force Football | Tags: Brandi Srda Chicago Force Clarksville Fox driving family feminism football humor Iowa Iowa Crush Melissa Smith Peg-Eye Nate Sam Grisafe The Girl The Gremline Wisconsin Warriors women

Trackback Pings

» Sudan: A history lesson from Rosemary's Thoughts
Sudan gained its independence in the year 1956, but unfortunately it became a tug of war between the Arab North and the African South. It was a civil war between non-muslims, non-arabs, and it lasted until 1972. War broke out again between the North [Read More]

Tracked on May 21, 2008 4:33 PM

Comments