Sports stats



Freedom Conduct Open Tryout for 2009 Season

by Randy Snow
January 4, 2009 - Continental Indoor Football League (CIFL)
Fort Wayne Freedom


About 20 athletes hoping to earn a spot on the 2009 Fort Wayne Freedom roster showed up at the ASH Centre in Fort Wayne for an open player tryout on Saturday, January 3. It is the only player tryout planned by the team.

Aside from the players who were there to try out for the team, there were also several others in attendance. Among them were quarterback Randy Hutchison and wide receivers Dan Musielewicz and Brian Dolph. All three played last season for the Kalamazoo Xplosion and have already signed to play for Fort Wayne in 2009.

Last season, Hutchison quarterbacked the Xplosion to the Continental Indoor Football League title game, which Kalamazoo hosted at Wings Stadium. The game was a close one right up until the final gun, but it was the Saginaw Sting who came away with an exciting 41-37 win.

Hutchison has high expectations for the upcoming season. "Our goal last year was a CIFL championship and obviously we fell short of that. This year (our goal) is still the same, a championship. Nothing less than that is acceptable."

Freedom head coach Matt Land is no stranger to winning either. He is also the head coach at Division III Trine University in Angola, Indiana. His team was undefeated in 2008 with a 10-0 record, but lost in the first round of the playoffs.

"I expect us to put a pretty dang good team on the field," Land said of the Fort Wayne team. "We're going to have some veteran players and some new blood in there. We're going to be a competitive team." Land coached the Freedom in 2005 when the team was a member of United Indoor Football and led them into the playoffs. He also took over the team last season for the final four games.

One other player at the tryout who is hoping to earn a roster spot in Fort Wayne was Chesaurae Rhodes, a three-year veteran of the CIFL. In 2006, he and Dolph were teammates on the Battle Creek Crunch. In 2007, Rhodes played for the Marion Mayhem and last year he played for the Flint Phantoms.

The CIFL has been scaled back considerably for 2009 and will field just eight teams, down from 15 teams last year. Several teams left the CIFL to join the new Indoor Football League while others, like Kalamazoo, Flint and New Jersey, simply will not be returning. Another CIFL franchise, the Miami Valley Silverbacks from Troy, Ohio, decided not to field a team in 2009, but plan to return to the league in 2010.

Training camp for the Freedom begins in mid-February and the team's first game of the 2009 season is scheduled for Saturday, March 14, a road game against a new expansion team in Huntington, West Virginia. Fort Wayne's first home game is set for Saturday, March 21 when they will host the Marion Mayhem.

- - -

Randy Snow is a freelance football writer from Kalamazoo, Michigan. Since 2003, he has covered the Arena Football League, arenafootball2, United Indoor Football, the Continental Indoor Football League, the All American Football League and the Canadian Football League. Randy has been a member of the Arena Football League Writer's Association since 2005. He also runs the website www.theworldoffootball.com and can be reached at randysnow22@yahoo.com.



Continental Indoor Football League Stories from January 4, 2009


The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

Other Recent Fort Wayne Freedom Stories



Sports Statistics from the Stats Crew
OurSports Central