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Sting Top Raiders, 38-30

March 30, 2009 - Indoor Football League (IFL)
Saginaw Sting News Release


The Saginaw Sting must not have liked the taste of losing to River City last week. Their 38-30 come from behind win over the Rochester Raiders on March 29 proved they weren't ready to taste defeat again.

"The win was great for the team," Sting Head Coach Karl Featherstone said. "Everybody pretty much just clicked from the beginning. Everybody knew what they had to do."

Saginaw looked to take the lead on the opening drive of the game, after a 35 yard pass from Damon Dowdell to Nate Collins gave them the ball on the Raiders four yard line. However, the Raiders defense clamped down, and held the Sting off the scoreboard.

Rochester took their possession down to the Sting's six yard line. From there the Raiders handed the ball off to Jamal Porter for a six yard strike to go up 7-0 with 5:30 to go in the first quarter. Saginaw answered as time ran out in the first frame, on a touchdown pass to Collins, from eight yards out. The game tying score was set up by a 15 yard run by Ricco Hill, who broke several tackles to make his way to the eight yard line.

Rochester missed a field goal on their next possession, but was able to pin the Sting deep in their own end. This proved critical after the Raider defense held the Sting to a field goal attempt out of their own end zone. Anthony Gallagher's attempt came up short, which allowed Rochester's Chris Carter to return the ball 46 yards for a touchdown.

"Pretty much what it was our guys were so hyped and ready to play this game they started to put themselves out of position," Featherstone said about Carter's return. "They have a good return team, I'm not taking that away from them. But we were a little bit out of position and not running our lanes like we were supposed to."

The two teams traded possessions the remainder of the half, without either being able to put more points on the board. Featherstone, who took over offensive play calling duties this week, felt the need to apologize to the team at the half.

"I hadn't called plays all year," he said about the slow start on offense "I apologized to the team on not having more points on the board. It was just me getting the feel of calling plays on the field." The Sting started off the second half poorly as well, when on the half's opening kick Carter stormed 53 yards for another score, giving the Raiders a 21-7 lead just seconds into the third quarter. Despite being down by two scores, Featherstone wasn't worried his team would drop their second home game in a row.

"Pretty much we were just saying that there was plenty of football left to play," he said. "We knew that they weren't better than we were, we just had to execute and complete some passes and score some points. We had to start shutting them down a little bit more."

Robert Height scored on an 11 yard strike from Dowdell with 11:45 to go in the third, which brought the Sting back to within seven, at 21-14.

Rochester answered back with a field goal by Adam Lanocot with six minutes to go in the period, before Dowdell found Nick Body from 11 yards out for Saginaw, which brought the score to 24-21 after the third quarter.

The Sting took their first lead of the game four minutes into the fourth quarter on a Dowdell 20 yard touchdown pass to Height, before an electric 49 yard missed field goal touchdown return by Ernie Smith gave Saginaw a 35-24 lead with just under eight minutes to go.

Rochester made a late comeback effort with a Mike Macjewski seven yard touchdown catch from Omar Baker, but a Gallagher 38 yard field goal and timely big plays on defense helped ice the game for the Sting.

"They knew it was going to be a fight," Featherstone said. "The guys never gave up and kept pushing and finished the game off with a win."

The win, which moves the Sting to 2-1 on the season in the Indoor Football League, was especially sweet for the team in that it avenged one of their only two loses from their Continental Indoor Football Championship (CIFL) run from a year ago. Since Rochester was suspended from the CIFL's playoffs last year, payback had to wait until this season.

"It was a revenge thing, it was exactly that," Featherstone said. "Having to play these guys again, a few of the guys were looking for that revenge. And that revenge was pretty sweet actually."

Dowdell, completed 18 of 33 passes for 162 yards, four touchdowns, with zero interceptions.

While the Sting were able to get some revenge on Sunday, the team hopes to inflict some more payback this Saturday as they travel to River City to play the Rage. River City gave the Sting their only loss of the season on March 20, a 55-41 loss.

"We are going to show them that it's not going to be the same team that they ran into before," he said. "They better put their pants on and not take us lightly. We are coming into River City to win this game."



Indoor Football League Stories from March 30, 2009


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