End of the Football Season

Really.

The city of Ravensburg has an American football team, the Ravensburg Razorbacks. By that it is meant that it is a team that actually plays American football. We watched part of a game a month or so ago, but this last Saturday we watched (and paid attendance = 4 Euro which is about $5.20 per person) the last home game of the season. They play from about May until September. This time they played the Frankfurt Universe. Besides liking football, we did have a missionary reason for attending. The coach is a member of the church. He is not on our local records (yet) and doesn't come to meetings, but we had the opportunity to meet with him after the game. Also, the Quarterback, Courtney, is also from America and likes the missionaries. They will be meeting with him. He is not a member of the church. He and his wife are really nice people. We got to talk with them as well.

I took a few pictures and have a couple of small videos to show you. This is a "professional" team, but compared to the football we see in America, it is really more like high school play. One consideration is that they are not funded very well and do not get much support from the local people or municipalities. The field they play on is about like a high school field, though it does have artificial turf (no it is not Smurf blue). The bleachers are new this year (before they had no bleachers at all), but it was not large enough to accommodate the people. We stood in front of them the whole game. We really enjoyed the game and it was obvious that the players and fans enjoyed it as well.

The Elders joined us at about half-time.

Here they are at the start of the game. Yes, that is the cheerleaders in front of us, though through most of the game they did not know what to do. They did do a nice demonstration at half-time, a pyramid, etc. They led a few cheers in English during halftime, but not at all during the game.

Here is one of the smaller fans. We looked into buying shirts, but they were too expensive for our needs.

Yes, and also here in Germany, the refs are not the epitome of fitness either.

The scoreboard was a simple layout that someone had to move the pieces around to form the numbers. Here he just barely set the score of 8 to 0. The Razorbacks had gotten a safety first and then made a touchdown on a fumble recovery. They missed the point-after kick.

Here is a play from lineup to throw.

Here is another one so you get the idea. Both of these has the Razorbacks on offense. Near the end of this, you see the coach walk past us. He is the one with gray hair in a pony-tail.

Here is the ending score. It actually was a bit close in the end. The other team threatened, but the defense held. I don't really want to be too critical, but their kicking left a lot to be desired. For example, on one kickoff, the kicker just ran over the ball, knocking it forward a little and it rolled around some, so he just ran back and kicked it out of bounds. This was after one of their touchdowns.

With all that, they did win and they had a end of season celebration (a winning season, 8W 5L 1Tie):

Those are the elders in front of us watching the celebration.