Woody Cavenaugh

I know I promised you something thoughtful and deep about the differences between the fencing mindset and the football one, but I'm too tired for meaningful. This time yesterday I was 900 miles away in Montreal having just woke up from five hours sleep. Today I am at my desk on five hours sleep, deep and thoughtful will just have to wait until I have had deep sleep of no less than nine hours in duration, and a meal that didn't come in a paper bag.

In the United States convenience store clerk is a job handled by those working their way through college, retired, or hope to get back to school one day. Fast food worker is a job held by high school kids, the retired, and others I can't quite describe at this level of rest. In Quebec, fast food and convenience store worker are jobs that aspiring models and actors work at in hopes of being discovered. Even the one working the fry vat has bright intelligent eyes, clear skin and a body that could not have ever eaten fast food. It was weird.

I remember walking into a convenience store in the middle of nowhere Quebec, my six years of failed french lessons a jumbled mess of misfiring synapses and emotional damage. This completely beautiful girl at the counter smiles at me saying "Bonjour, hello!" I manage to mumble a bonjure back while trying not to look at my shoes. She rings up the two 20oz bottles Pepsi Max and cheerfully says to me "Quatre dollars, et vinget-et-un cent ci vous pley" (Just like that, only spelled correctly). I hand her my card, I have no Canadian currency. I remember her asking something that I knew meant "Is that all for you?" I nodded red faced, noticing the soles on my Clarks were cracking and the shoes really needed replacing, maybe this time with a black pair.
She handed me my card and my receipt for the two drinks costing four dollars and change. I signed the slip and pushed it back across the counter. I managed to stammer, "Merci boucoups" as I scampered out the door. I climbed back into the Rav-4 thinking, aloud to no one in particular "The King of Dorkness has returned."

It was like that.

Even in the stands watching the football game I wondered if the game was being played on the campus of some sort of modeling school. Even the old people were healthy, happy, smiling, and model-esq. I felt like the frog prince's stunt double.

After the game, the members of the Blitz took off their helmets and shoulder pads and rushed over to the fence to visit with friends and family. They didn't look anything like a football team. They looked like they were auditioning for a women of football calendar and there just weren't enough months in the year to go around.

I packed up the wet computer bag, wet camera bag, wet video gear, wet tripod, wet notebook, and put the all in their respective wet bags. I slogged down the portable bleachers squelching in my wet shoes, my wet cloths clinging uncomfortably under my wet jacket. I looked worse than a clog in a medical examiner's sink. Funny thing was everyone I met on the slog over to the vehicle were completely dry and smiled a friendly smile, "Pardon moi", "Excuse me", "Bonjour", "Hi", each spoken with the sort of warmth you reserve for your closest friends during the holidays. Sitting in the car waiting for the team to return from the locker room I heard live music from a bar nearby, it was Celtic Rock, the fiddle player was on fire, and my toes squelched wetly to the beat. The air was clean and cool and the world was perfect, apart from the loss that is.

How can a city that looks so run down, with a highway system that looks like it was designed by a group of attention deficit disorder spastics having a group conniption fit with a plate of spaghetti all be so darned nice and attractive all at once? It is a mystery for the ages.

Posted by at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know where I am.
We can't find the field.
The Magellan can only do so much, one has to plan a highway system, not simply stack new roads on top of the old ones.

Finally we make it, tired and disorientated, to the field. I think it was at some sort of school it was hard to say. I didn't see any classrooms but there were a lot of apartment buildings everywhere.

The field is turf, it is laid out for some other sport that is about ten or twenty yards wider than football field width. The football lines are there too. There is no announcer's box. The bleachers are in the rain and are the short and portable type. The announcer is in a tent on the side line.

I have my gear and a borrowed video camera. I begin to set up. Did I mention the rain. It was a warm soaking rain. It was a very nice rain. But it isn't a nice rain if you have a note pad, lap top, digital camera and video camera. I had all of these. I had to improvise.

From Phoenix VS B...

The award for Phoenix fandom goes to Murph's mom who came up from Rhode Island to see the game, and brought no rain gear. It was love that kept her in the stands, and it wasn't a love of football.

Alright, lets talk kickoff. Phoenix receive on the 28. They fumble, Blitz recover and at 14:04 in the first quarter make their first touchdown, extra point is good, and away we go.

Phoenix receive on the 30 and fumble (sound familiar?). The difference is this time they manage to keep it. But it is for naught. At 7:06 the Blitz score another touch down. They seem very well practiced. Very well rehearsed. Very well prepared. It is very obvious they studied the heck out of the game footage we sent them. The Blitz have one microphone and their cheerleader is running it. But he's a nice guy. Occasionally he announces the fouls to the crowd. Mostly he cheers the Blitz on and keeps the crowd stirred up.

Phoenix receive on the 38 and with 4:21 left in the first quarter cross the 50 for the first time. Tired, lost, hungry, and shook up is no way to go through a football game, but if that's what you have, that's what you play with.

Phoenix get within 10 of the end zone and lose possession. This will be a theme this wet enchanted evening. This first time however, the Phoenix intercept it back. 13:29 in the 2nd quarter the Phoenix get on the board with seven.

I'm digging the Canadian fans. Half of them I absolutely love and the other half are cruising for a rumble. All of them are far too pretty. The fact that they can buy beer at the concession stand and the fact that the Phoenix are such class acts lead to me loving them all by the end of the game. They just needed to get buzzed and realize that we're cool too. By the end of the game they were cheering for both sides. They just wanted to see good plays.

Looks like the Blitz are the other tier two team that can pass. 7:12 on a 4th down the Blitz make the score 21 to the Phoenix's seven.

Phoenix receive on the 38th, break out with a couple of most excellent runs. They made it all the way to the 8 yard line. Few teams have a defense that can outrun the Phoenix. The Blitz is one of these, stopping the Phoenix offense cold. It is a terrific position for the Phoenix Defense to do that voodoo that they do so well, and the Blitz knew it too. The first half trickles away one knee at a time.

The referees had a tough time this game, they were asked to referee American football but I think they were reffing something else- European football perhaps. Fortunately the IWFL had a officer on hand to notice this and quietly take notes on it. Perhaps next year...

Third quarter, Phoenix are a little more awake and warmed up. They hold off the Blitz score until 12:13. Next Phoenix possession its a short pass and a 50 yard run for the Phoenix Score, its now Blitz 28, Phoenix 14.

8:19 the Blitz cross the line again. It isn't about their Offense being better or faster, it has everything to do with being prepared and practiced against the Phoenix defense in the previous two weeks. 35 - 14 Blitz.

2:00 in the 3rd quarter the Phoenix drive...drive...drive it home making the score Blitz 35, Phoenix 21. 1:13 on the first Blitz possession after the kickoff they score a touchdown off of a pass, Blitz now at 41.

Sometime after something happened but I don't know what it was because of the big assed tent on the sidelines in the way.

Final Score Blitz 41, and Chicago bound, Phoenix 27 and hoping they can get back across the boarder. Tonight the Blitz proved that being better rested and better prepared isn't much but its enough to get you to Chicago for the championships. Congratz Blitz, and I'll see you there!

Stay tuned. I'm too tired to write it now as it is after 1am on Sunday in Canada and we have to be at work on Monday. Tomorrow, we hellride. I have another Phoenix VS Blitz entry in me. Don't bother if you are looking for football talk because it isn't going to happen. This is about wining, losing, blame, and the differences between team sports and individual sports. I'm writing this here so I can't weasel out of writing it. You will hold me accountable to it. Plus there's a drinking story in it, so it can't lose.

Posted by at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They say an army moves on it's stomach. This assumes of course that everything else involved with moving that army is already taken care of.

As their first "full fledged-full membership" season with the IWFL the Phoenix can be said to operate on a shoe string budget- and that's giving shoestrings a lot of credit. They managed to fund themselves almost the whole regular season through dues, donations, and paying out of pocket. After a 7 and 1 season the barrel was dry for playoffs and the ever present championship game in Chicago. But before Chicago, they have to move 28 players, two coaches, and a blogger to a different country- and back again. It seems simple when you refer to 28 players as a group. The reality is when traveling you are moving a player and a player and a player (keep going until you reach 28, then add a coach, a coach, and a blogger (or after this gets published the "official team tattle tail").

So here's the break down, two coaches, a blogger and ten players climbed into a fifteen passenger van and a support vehicle. We left at 8am Friday morning. Our trip took us north to Liverpool NY where we were guest of TP's family. They had a house large enough to sleep us and were ready and capable of feeding the entier team. Saturday we'll climb back into the vehicles and drive the last four or five hours (depending on whose navigating) to the field.

Group two left about 2pm and will drive strait through to Montreal. They will arrive late, sleep later and rendeavous at the field.

Groups three through five or six are doing their own thing which includes getting their United Airlines flight cancelled (Boo United!) and getting hooked up by US Air (Horay for US Air!). Players as of Friday night, in New England, in NC, and somewhere on the highway between here and there.

If all goes well, all 28 players, two coaches, and a blogger will be at the field just outside of Montreal Quebec Canada at 5:30pm for the kickoff. Pray for us.

One more thing that separates football, and I suppose all team sports, from fencing occured this week. The IWFL mandates that each team must supply the next team they play with the game footage from the last game they played. Some teams don't do it, and they get fined for it. In one case that I am aware of the snubbed team got the film from the team the offending team played last. Its playoff time and now the gamesmenship has driven into overdrive. Two days after playing their last game, the Phoenix had the game authored to DVD and in the mail to Canada. The Montreal team made sure the game arrived the day before we had to leave. The rule about getting the film exchanged was fufilled without actually allowing it to be useful. Well played... So if the Phoenix win, they did it without the game footage (woot!), if they lose this pre-game foul will have had something to do with it. I can see it from their point of view- Win at all cost! Hoo raa!! Whatever. Lame.

The best team should win based on skill on the field not BS off the field. Rant off and goodnight!

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)