Weekend in Prague/Upcoming Game

Well, as I told you last week, we had a bye this weekend due to the Easter holiday. With our free time, a few of the guys decided to drive to Prague, Czech Republic to spend a few days there. The owner of our team lent us a vehicle, and we piled in and hit the road. I started the drive, and it was pretty awesome. We are just 15 minutes or so from the German border, and once we crossed into Germany, I was driving on the world famous German Autobahn. Every German speaking country has an Autobahn, it roughly translates to "interstate". However, the reason Germany's is so famous is that for stretches of it (i.e. in country areas and away from cities) there is no speed limit. This was a pretty remarkable thing to see. I won't go into details about how fast I was driving, but I can tell you that at one point I was driving faster than I had ever driven in my life, and was getting passed like I was literally standing still.

A map of our journey with arrows at the start and end of our trip, and a circle where we crossed the border into the
Czech Republic.

Overview of the city.

Old church in the center of town.

We got a glimpse at some of the corruption that happens in Eastern European countries as we entered into the Czech Republic. In order to drive on their interstates, a person must purchase a sticker to place on their car. When we went to purchase our 10-day sticker at the border, the man told us it would cost either 15 euros or 250 Czech Korunas (the currency of the Czech Republic). The reason this was so strange is that the exchange rate was roughly 1 euro to 25 Korunas. So, obviously, the sticker should have cost 10 euros, but the man knew there was literally nothing we could do about it, so the odds are likely that he took our extra 5 euros and put it in his pocket. We were literally powerless. If we wanted to drive on their interstates, we had to pay for the sticker, and he knew that. My guess would be that had any one of us spoken Czech, we would have been given a fair price. However, that was not to be.

Busy pedestrian area in Prague. (This was a Thursday
afternoon, mind you)

View down a cool old street. 

Once we reached Prague, we spent our days walking around and seeing the sights, and our nights doing the same, except trying to experience the night life. One night we ended up in Central Europe's largest night club, which was definitely interesting. The next night we ended up meeting a guy from Cedar Rapids, Iowa who had lived in Prague for 5 years and had just started up a club there. He had a deal that for 20 euros you could start the night at his club, and they would show you all around to different clubs throughout the city. It was very awesome due to the fact that there were probably around 20 other Americans there with us that night. Most of them being students who were studying abroad and had come to visit Prague for the week. It was very nice to hear some other people speaking real, American English.

The city was very beautiful during the day time as well, though unfortunately it did not seem to be extremely photogenic (at least not to my untrained eye). For some reason my photos didn't quite capture the beauty and intrigue that the city had to offer, and for that I do apologize. I suppose to truly experience it, one would simply have to visit there.

This was once an old castle the has now been turned into a church.

Very serene river in the middle of a city of 1.3 million people...awesome.

This weekend my dad and brother will be arriving into Zurich on Saturday morning, and I am definitely excited to have them here and be able to show them a little bit about how I've been living here. They will stay for a few days before leaving to see parts of Germany without me, but then my dad will come back later and join my mom and grandma when they arrive here a week later. As I said, I am very excited to see them all.

Calanda Broncos logo
(www.calandabroncos.ch/images/content/BroncoBlau-1.jpg)

Also this weekend is a big game for the Cineplexx Blue Devils. We play the Calanda Broncos, from Chur, Switzerland, a mere 40 minute drive away from where we play. This game is quite a rivalry, as players seem to often go back and forth between these two teams from year to year. The proximity of the teams also seems to create a big buzz when the Broncos are the opponent.

They are a very strong team, as they have not lost a game in at least a year, and I think longer (though I don't have the gumption right now to go look that up). Before last weekend, the Broncos were the number 8 ranked team in all of Europe. However, after beating the 9th ranked team (an Italian squad) rather handily, I would have to imagine that their ranking would only go up. This game will be a big challenge, but I am excited to see how our guys will perform against top-notch European competition.

I hope all is well back in the States, and hopefully the weather improves for those of you in West Central Illinois. Check back next week for a game report.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!
Mitch Niekamp

Blue Devils: 20 - Bern Grizzlies: 14

Christian (one of our great
Austrian WR's) returning
a kick

Mike running with one of his 7 catches on Sunday

On Sunday we traveled to the capital city of Switzerland to face the Bern Grizzlies, a team that was 2-1 in league play heading into the game. We started the game with the ball and scored on the 3rd play of the game. After failing to convert the extra point, we had a 6-0 lead. We would never trail the rest of the game, eventually winning 20-14 in what was undoubtedly the fastest football game I have ever been a part of. The game took only 1 hour and 55 minutes. There were very few incompletions in the game from either side, and every run play seemed to end in-bounds as the clock ran nearly all game. Our defense played very well all game, and came up with a big stop in the last 2 minutes to secure the lead and give our offense the ball back. We would eventually run out the clock to go home with a win. Despite winning, we had plenty of mistakes on the offensive side of the ball. Three separate times we were inside of the opposing team's 15 yard line and came away with no points. To continue winning this season we will have to prevent something like that from happening again. Despite this poor performance, it's always tough to complain about a win, and we will move on to our next game being happy to be 3-0 and tied for first in league play. Below are the offensive stats from the game, based on our film: (I can tell you that I had one fumble that is not represented on the stats. It killed a drive inside the opponent 10 yard line, and squandered a chance to score. Another mistake that I will need to prevent from happening again for us to continue winning.)

Prague, Czech Republic (www.movieoneinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/
2011/03/prague-bridges.jpg)

The entire league has a bye this weekend, as we observe the Easter holiday. Because of the bye, we have a few extra days off from practice this week, and a few of the imports are planning on heading to Prague, Czech Republic with our time off. I'm very excited to make the journey to yet another country here in Europe. I've heard some incredible things about Prague, and I can't wait to see what it has to offer. We are kind of "winging it" as far as travel plans are concerned, which is definitely out of character for me, so it should definitely be interesting to see how the trip works out.

 

I hope all is well back in the States, and I wanted to say "thanks" to everyone who is taking time to read this blog. I have been astounded by the number of views this page receives every day. It makes it much easier to sit down and write an up-to-date account of my experience here knowing that so many of you are reading. Thanks again for everyone reading, and check back next week for an update on practices and a report on our trip this weekend.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!

Mitch Niekamp

Kragujevac Wild Boars: 51 - Cineplexx Blue Devils: 7

In one of the most lopsided losses of my football career, we were defeated by our Serbian opponents on Sunday afternoon, 51-7. This loss left us out of the race to win the EFAF cup, and now we can only chase a Swiss championship. We were shorthanded with injuries both before and during the game, but that was still no excuse for the game that was played on Sunday. We were dominated the whole game, and defeated by a very good team, though I thought we should have played closer with them. Offensively we moved the ball decently well, but made mistakes at bad points of key drives, causing us to score only 7 points. There is much to improve on offensively. We will obviously need to score many more points if we want to get back to our winning ways of the previous two weeks. We can only do our statistics based on the film that we have of the game, and unfortunately a couple of drives were cut out of the game, but the following are the offensive stats based on what we were able to see from film: (I can tell you that the film cut out 2 INT's that I threw, causing a bit of a rough passing day for me personally. I will need to improve to help our team get back to winning).

This coming Sunday we travel to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, to face a team that is 2-1 in our league. We are 2-1 overall (2-0 in league play). This will be an important game for our team as we try to get back on track and continue working towards winning a Swiss championship.

I apologize for the short post, but I must complete my German homework before we have our lesson today (sometimes it sounds like I'm throwing up when I try to speak this language). I hope all is well back at home, and check back next week when I will have an update of our game against the Bern Grizzlies.

Go Blue Devils/Boys!
Mitch Niekamp

Blue Devils: 34 - Mean Machine: 18

Sunday, April 3rd saw the Blue Devils post our second win of the season, a 34-18 victory over the Basel Mean Machine of Switzerland. We are now 2-0 on the year, and couldn't have gotten off to a better start. Sunday we switched gears a little bit offensively from the previous week and took what the defense gave us: lots of running room. The passing game was a little bit off on Sunday, as we had some mistakes through the air, giving us some very sub-par passing statistics. But that doesn't matter when your O-line and RB's do what ours did on Sunday. They combined to have one of the best running attacks I have ever seen in a game as a player or as a spectator. We got the ball first and scored on our first possession, a TD pass to Mike Jennings from myself, and we never looked back. We never trailed in the game, and the game was really never in doubt. Were it not for a few offensive/defensive mistakes on our part, the score could have been worse, but we will never argue with a win. The stats from the game are below:

Mike said this "was not a hold", and luckily, the
officials apparently agreed.

Coach Mader has let me call most of the offensive plays throughout the first two games, and I plan on that trend continuing throughout the season. It has been really great to be able to call my own plays as a QB, as I get to call what I feel comfortable with and what I think will help the team most. Believe me, it wasn't easy for me to call 37 runs to only 18 passes (with 3 of those passes being hail mary/desperation type calls at the end of the first half), but that is exactly what our team needed to win the game, and I was happy to call those plays in order for us to come away with the win. 

I was actually the recipient of this pass on a 2 pt conversion play,
believe it or not. Unfortunately, a block in the back by Mike nullified
the play, and we missed the 2 pt from 10 yards further back. This
would have been the first catch in my football career. You can
bet that I will make up for it later on this year.

For those of you who don't know, let me explain to you a little about how the game works over here in the Swiss league we are playing in, the NLA (National League A, the highest level in Switzerland. Keep in mind we are the only Austrian team in the Swiss league). Each team is allowed to have only 4 total Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and Japanese players on the team, and only 2 may be on the field at any given time. Any player who has a dual passport with USA/MEX/CAN/JAP and another country does not count towards this number. We are lucky enough to have a MLB from Florida State who also has a Jamaican passport, so when he is on the field, we may have 2 other Americans aside from him on the field also. We currently have 5 imports who are listed as only Americans, so one of us has to sit on the sideline each week. It is up to each team to decide how many USA/MEX/CAN/JAP imports they bring in. If they don't have the funds, some teams can't bring as many Americans. It all depends on the monetary backing the team has. Imports from any other country in the world aside from the four listed above do not count towards the number, and an unlimited number of the may be on the field at the same time. I hope I have explained this clearly, as I realize it is a little bit tricky. 

Tino running for some of his 264 yards.

This week, we play a game in the EFAF (European Federation of American Football) Cup against the Kragujevac Wild Boars from Serbia. This game is at home, thank goodness. I don't think any of us would have been too excited to take the train into Serbia to be quite honest. This is a playoff style bracket played throughout the season with select teams throughout Europe being included in the playoff. If we win this Sunday, we will play another team from somewhere within Europe at a later date in the season. If we were to lose on Sunday, we would be eliminated from the EFAF cup and on the dates where the following EFAF games would have been played, we will have a bye week. In EFAF games, teams are allowed to dress only 3 Americans, but they may also all be on the field at the same time. This leaves our team in a dilemma this weekend, as we have 5 Americans, but only 3 may play. I am interested to see who the coaches decide to play in this game. 

I would also like to send out a big CONGRATULATIONS to Jacob Tucker of our alma mater, Illinois College. For those of you who didn't see it, Jacob won the NCAA dunk contest against 6 DI athletes in Houston on Final Four weekend last Thursday. That was big news here in Austria, and I can't imagine how much buzz is going on around the IC campus right now. What a great thing for our school, and what a great thing for Jacob. I always liked Jacob because every summer while a few of us football guys would stay in Jacksonville to work out together and prepare for the season, Jacob would do the same, and I would always see him in the gym working on his game. I always appreciated the work he put in when no one was watching, and it truly paid off for him. GO IC.

Well, that's all for now. I hope all is well back in the States, and check back in next week for an update on our game against the Wild Boars

Go Blue Devils/Boys!

Mitch Niekamp