Alright, so its actually Friday, May 20. Tomorrow we play the Ystad Rockets in a matchup between (spoiler alert) the only two remaining unbeaten teams in Division I Södra. However, I am still way behind in this blog, so I will attempt to catch it up in the next few days.
This post is about our BYE week, May 1-8. I also owe you all a post about the week of the Lugi game (May 9-14) and, of course, this week leading up to Ystad. But, for now, the BYE week (May 1-8):
On Sunday, following our defeat of Ekeby, I headed out on a scouting roadtrip. Tyson and most of the club travelled to Gothenburg, about three hours northwest of Kristianstad, for U15 and U17 games against their counterparts with the Gothenburg Marvels club. I stayed behind though to scout. Tyson generously lent me a car so that I could drive about an hour south to Ystad to scout the Lugi at Ystad Senior game and then drive about an hour and a half northwest of Ystad to Ekeby (just outside of Helsingborg) to scout the Limhamn at Ekeby U17 game.
Tim Hermansson (Senior OL/DL) met me at my apartment and we picked up Macce Schön (Senior LB) in Åhus, on our way to Ystad, which is on the south coast of Sweden.
In fact, Ystad's field is right on the coast. The picture above was taken from inside the fence of the field (which you can see on the left side). The field is very breezy as the wind comes in from the Baltic Sea.
Lugi, in red/white was our next opponent after the upcoming bye week. Ystad would be the team we'd face the following week, so this was a good chance to scout both. It was Lugi's first match of the season, but they did not show any obvious signs of rust or unreadiness. Ystad was coming off a tight 6-0 victory over Limhamn, considered to be one of the better teams in the division.
At halftime we got some food from the concession stand, which featured Premier sodas. The soda delivered on its promise much better than the pizza I spoke of a few posts ago...
It was a very physical contest featuring two predominantly run oriented offenses. Ystad was able to move the ball most effectively in the air, however, and leaned that way after having success throwing the ball. Lugi is a power running team and stuck with that strategy throughout and should have scored on a couple of occasions, but fell short. Ystad was the better team and proved it, winning with a final score of 20-0, which was the score when we left near the end of the third quarter to try to catch as much of the Ekeby/Limhamn U17 game, in Ekeby.
Our drive to Ekeby was somewhat ominous, as we noticed the sky getting darker and darker as we drove north. By the time we were outside of Helsingborg, we were driving through patches of rain. We quickly were wishing we were back in the chilly wind of Ystad.
We arrived at the U17 game just in time for the last few plays of the third quarter, which included a Limhamn touchdown from within the five. We also arrived just in time to experience the rain, thunder, lightning, hail, and overall unpleasant weather that Ekeby was featuring that day. Unfortunately, the weather prevented me from taking a lot of notes on the two teams for Tyson, but I was able to take some video on my camera before we got out of there cold and wet. Oh, by the way, Limhamn blanked Ekeby's U17 23-0.
Happily back in the car, we punched Kristianstad in the GPS and headed home. Apparently the GPS favored the scenic route:
I have now driven on AND off road in Sweden.
On Friday, Ben took the day off of work and he and I spent some time in town. Sacce came with us and we also ran into two other of the Hörnquist's: one of his younger sisters, Miranda, and an older brother, Sebastian. Miranda joined us for lunch and fika, where we also met Johan Olsson, who used to play in the Predators junior program with Ben. Less than five minutes after running into Miranda in the square, Ben spotted his brother Sebastian in a shop. What are the odds of running into two Hörnquists in such a short time? Higher than you might think: Ben and Sacce are two of eleven children!
After fika, we headed to Kristianstad Arena, which is right next the Kristianstad IP, for a sort of rugby tournament between three of the schools in town, Söderport, Österang, and C4. The Arena is designed for handball (team handball, which is very popular in Sweden, not the racket ball-like handball we know in California), and was completed less than a year ago.
The first "rugby" match was between Söderport (in red) and Österang (in black), the two largest schools and big rivals. The game being played was similar to rugby, but with various liberties taken with the rules to adapt it to an indoor game. The basic goal was to place the ball on the orange padded square to score a point.
After having taught in Mississippi for two years, the whole environment of the event was very interesting to me. Students basically went to the Arena on their own (the schools have kids ages 16-19, roughly), were funneled to sit with their school, and had almost no supervision by school authorities--at least none were super obvious. Students brought signs to support their school but, mostly, insult (often vulgarly) the other schools. There wasn't chaos, but it was a much less structured environment than one would see at almost any public school event in the states. I suppose its hard to explain, but it was very interesting to see how the event was organized, particularly how the students were handled by those who appeared to be running the event (who kept a very low profile... in fact, other than the announcer and two student referees, I'm not really sure who was in charge).
In any case, back to the competition. Predators were on both sides of the match. Above, Alex Paiement (DE) and Marcus Dicksson (RB) represented Söderport and Nils Andersson (CB) represented Österang. I held my breath every time any were involved in a tackle on this hard indoor surface.
Söderport jumped out to a commanding 3-0 halftime lead and was able to weather a very spirited Österang comeback to win. We left after that game, but it turns out Söderport went on to beat C4 (who received a first round BYE) to win the tournament. My fears were merited, sadly, as Marcus sustained a foot injury in the competition.
Saturday I decided to skip scouting to stay in Kristianstad and watch/help out as the U17 Predators hosted the Ekeby Greys. Tyson and I switched roles as I manned the spotter's post at the top of the bleachers and he commanded the troops.
The chain crew and ball boys were senior players. It was nice to see the guys volunteering their time to help out the organization and give back to the junior team who has served the same roles at our games. Below Sorin Pandrea (Senior DB/RB/QB and, this day, ball boy) checks in on his son, Neo, during a break in the action.
The U17 team played a good game and rebounded well after a loss to the Gothenburg Marvels with a convincing victory over Ekeby to win their first match of the season.
That night I took the train to Hässleholm to spend some time with old friends. Lucas and Sarah had invited me to eat with them and Johan, and Mariana would join us later in the evening. Mariana had engagements all day, so Johan got to spend the day with their new daughter, Cornelia.
The chefs prepared an absolutely delicious meal, as usual, which included grilled pork, grilled vegetables, and a hard to describe but delicious foil wrapped fruit concoction that was slow cooked on the grill and topped with vanilla ice cream. I'm getting hungry thinking about it, too.
After dinner and dessert we brought out a Trivial Pursuit variant that involved betting on your opponents answered. I was far too loose with my bets (and perhaps far too confident in my friends' knowledge) and was quickly out of chips. I also struggled mightily with some of the Swedish and/or European centered questions (the game was in Swedish, but my opponents were nice enough to translate everything for me). I even received a few do-overs for questions that would be impossible for me to answer, like those about Swedish novels written by Swedish authors, for example. I had generous hosts.
Overall, I was happy with my performance and, apparently, looking forward to Spring football at Rio Mesa!
Sunday brought another scouting opportunity, this time to Malmö to watch the Hässleholm Hurricanes take on the Limhamn Griffins. This time my scouting entourage included Ben, Lukas Klang (Senior OL/U17 OL Coach), and Emil Blomgren (Senior WR). We took the train into the new Triangeln stop in Malmö and then made the short walk to Limhamn's field.
The Griffins, in purple/white, proved to be too much for the Hurricanes, who continue to struggle but showed signs of improvement. Limhamn has appeared to be an offensive chameleon of sorts, running a wide variety of plays in different offensive styles. They did a decent amount of damage running the ball in the first half to build a 20-6 lead, then oddly, decided to open it up in the second half and ran their spread style passing attack to pour it on and win with a final score of 50-12.
Surprisingly, the BYE week did not offer as much free time as I had anticipated, but its good to keep busy. It's not like my schedule is overwhelming as it is! The Predators, disappointingly, proved to be susceptible to the common Swedish American football problem of a dip in practice attendance during BYE weeks. I continue to fight the status quo here when it comes to what is considered acceptable when it comes to football. I'm not a revolutionary or anything dramatic, but I am trying to push the guys to raise their level of commitment, effort, and mental toughness more comparable to that exhibited by most high school football programs. The athletes exist for there to be really good quality football played in this country, they just have to put in the time and the effort. I have been lucky to have some good and relatively dedicated players with the Predators, but there is always room for improvement.
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