WIN WOULD GIVE RAGE DIVISION TITLE
“Nothing short of a championship will be sufficient for this team in 2005”
That was the answer Rage Head Football Coach Mike Wyatt gave to a reporter in early March when asked how he viewed his team’s prospects for the upcoming NIFL season. It’s been the phrase around which the entire season has focused for players, assistant coaches, and other team personnel, and as Wyatt has said many times throughout the season, “it’s a long, haul, it’s 14 games spread out over 16 weeks, with practices, travel, wins and losses, and injuries. I’ve told the guys over and over, don’t get too high or too low over any one game, or even series of games, because it’s too easy to burn out. Right now, we are where I figured we would be, poised and confident, thankfully relatively healthy, and ready for the playoffs. This is a football team ready to slam head-first into the post season.”
The first tangible reward for The River City Rage of the NIFL is on tap for Friday Night at the Family Arena. A Rage victory over the Cincinnati Marshals will give Mike Wyatt’s overachieving troops the division crown in the NIFL’s Atlantic East and home field advantage throughout the conference playoffs. The Rage lead the division with a record of 9-2 on the year and are undefeated in 7 games in 2005 at the Family Arena. It all began in early December of last year with new owners, new uniforms, a new turf, and new outreaches to the fans and the St. Louis metro area media. Along the way, new talent emerged, employed and engrained to mesh as a unit on both sides of the line, guided by a coach who had experienced success at every level of coaching, who earlier in the year achieved his 200th career victory before the home fans in a game that saw his renowned offensive machine put 90 points on the board, and now that new era of indoor football in St. Louis takes the first step towards achieving the goal, the standard of excellence, boldly set by a coach who believed it from the start.
Kick-0ff is slated for 7pm at Family Arena. The game will be broadcast on 1380 ESPN and audio-streamed on both the ESPN and ragefootball.com websites. Friday is Fan Appreciation Nightwill be on hand until 6pm..
Anyone flirting with kick-off time at 7pm had best be warned.
