We get to the arena and it is a very nice venue for indoor football. However, our equipment is not there yet. So we wait and wait and wait. About 30 minutes before we have to take the field for warm-ups our equipment gets there. It's not new equipment but somewhat old equipment. The shoulder pads were decent but the helmets weren't very good. The pants were new and the pants were purple. Yes purple and our helmets were purple too (about the color of this background). The jerseys weren't new was well they were white and had the words "Ruff Riders" across the chest. Are you kidding me? Hahaha. So for one night we were the Cincinnati Ruff Riders.
Nobody's equipment fits real well. Some of the smaller guys are wearing pants 2 sizes too big. Needless to say we had to take the field. We were not quite sure how much Owner Steve was going to interact with us during the game as he took over the head coach duties. He let Carpenter coach the defense and the special teams and he was out on field with the offense.
It was kind of weird offensively because Steve would interact sometimes and other times let me call the plays. There was never any real flow. That was a little expected anyway. It is also hard that all this is happening as we are right in the middle of the playoff race, but the show must go on.
Things weren't good from the very start and we kicked off and Fayetteville took the opening kickoff back for a TD. However, our offense responded marching right down the field and I hooked up with Tobias Deans for a TD.
They came back and scored two more consecutive Touchdowns. On our next drive we were faced with a 4th and 4 on their 15-yard line, Steve elected to go for it instead of letting Obert kick the FG. Askew was tackled just short of the first down. On our next drive we managed to knock it in for a score. Our next drive was after a turnover on downs by our defense. On the next play I hit Askew on the right side but he got hit at the same time and the defender managed to wrestle it away from Askew. That was the kind of night and week it was for us: stuff just not going our way at all. Halftime score they were up 28-14.
The second half we were able to maintain but not pull any closer as we matched their scoring in the second half. It was just a blah game for us, but I liked the fact that we came down despite all the adversity and equipment problems and not getting much sleep at all the night before the game. To only lose by 2 TDs was pretty good. Our team wasn't down; instead, we stayed positive after the game.
Needless to say the dramatics weren't over yet. Askew was driving our fan back, Megan in the Freestar, and someone else was driving the 15-passenger van. We all got directions from one of the security guys at Fayetteville's arena. Turn right at the stop sign and left and the next stop sign and that will take you to route 87. So Askew did that but no one was behind us so we called back and they said they had to get gas and we were going the wrong way anyhow. So we got gas and were on our way for about 40 minutes. All of a sudden 3 lanes go down to one in a hurry. It is a military stop or something like that because they had to check our I.D.s because they were looking for a criminal. While talking to the guard, we said that we were on our way back to Cincinnati and we were getting to route 87. The guard paused and said route 87 is the other way.
So as it turns out Askew and our van were going the right way before Megan's van told us we were going the wrong way. So we turned around. Then I got to thinking about how they messed up the directions. They counted a stop sign that was in the Arena parking lot. Duh. You know how sometimes there are stop signs in parking lots like grocery stores to slow cars down. Well they counted that stop sign as one the security guy was talking about. Our van was smart enough to know that he was talking about stop signs outside the Arena parking lot!
Now we started going back the right way and passed the Arena about an hour and a half after we left it the first time.
We'd be a reality T.V. show hit, I'm telling you.