Sports

Football club hits the road

UM heads south to tussle with Central Maine Warriors

By Adam Clark

Posted on Sept. 28, 2006, at 12:00 a.m.

As the Northeast Independent Football League nears the halfway point of the regular season, the University of Maine Tackle Football Club will embark on a new challenge. It’s something they haven’t had to do in their short history: go on the road and win.

After three straight home games to open up their inaugural season, the Black Bears, who sit at 2-1 atop the East Division, will now play three straight games on the road – all three being meaningful. Two of those games come against division foes, the Central Maine Warriors and Exeter Gamblers, teams that are winless and have been defeated by UMaine this season. The other game is against the Northeast Knights, who are the only blemish on the Black Bears record thus far.

“[This road trip] means that our destiny is in our own hands, and we need to take care of business ‘behind enemy lines’ so to speak,” said player and coach Eric Whitman. “Two of the three are divisional games against teams we already faced that will be looking for payback, but if we win these two, we clinch our division and are division champs. Also a second meeting with the Knights sandwiched between [those two divisional games] means we’ll be looking to dish out a little payback of our own.”

Coming off last week’s 19-0 setback courtesy of the Knights, the Black Bears look to improve on several things during this trip. Mental mistakes, such as penalties, missed assignments and confusion about who’s on the field and off are areas that UMaine will be working on during this mid-season stretch.

“All in all, we’ll have to get back to the drawing board and find some rhythm on offense,” said Gilbert Cyr, who plays receiver, kicker, and punter, about an offense which turned the ball over four times and got shut out.

With the loss last week, the Black Bears dropped to 2-1, but with anything there are always setbacks. Looking at the positives, the Black Bears still hold a division lead; they have a defense that has only given up 25 points all season, and an offense which scored 64 points before being shut out in the last game.

“Getting as prepared as we can at home, [and] making sure the guys rest up before hand,” said Whitman of getting his team prepared for the road trip. “Any road game takes a lot out of you, but three straight weeks is tough, especially in football is tough. Add to that the fact that only a few of us ever had to travel so far to play a game, rest and mental preparation become so much more vital.”

After a successful home stand to start their inaugural season, the Black Bears look to improve their record as they play Central Maine Saturday night. The kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. in Winthrop.

“We had a goal of winning our division so we could host a playoff game at home,” said Whitman, of the team’s main goal this season. “We wanted to be a perfect model of what a school’s club team should be, and wanted to make sure we represented the university properly.”

So far, the UMaine Black Bear Tackle Football Club appears well on its way to achieving that feat.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.