Sweden Trip and Midsummer

This past week we had no game on the weekend, and no practice leading up to the midsummer weekend. Matt and I decided to use our free time the best we could so we jumped onto a cruise ship for a trip to Stockholm. The boat was a lot of fun, and very nice for how cheap it was. It was an overnight trip over to Stockholm from Helsinki. Then we had about eight hours to explore Stockholm before an overnight back to Helsinki. Stockholm was a very cool city, although the weather was pouring rain the entire time we were there. We did see the palace and all of what they call old town, which was very interesting to see.
When we got back we immediately were summoned to the midsummer celebrations at our teammates Tatu's house. This celebration consisted of many backyard games including Molkky, which I think I need to bring back to the states. Other than our daytime celebration we also did many Saunas and trips down to the lake to go swimming. At nighttime we went out to an obscure bar in Orelampe (sp?) This was a lot of fun, but consisted of taxis to and from the bar that ranged from 80-100 Euros, not cheap. Some pictures included here to show us having a good time during midsummer.

I’m writing from Oslo right now where I am meeting up with Tony Torres as well as a few Norwegian friends, ought to be a great week. There will be more to report on the trip by the end of the week. We have our 5th game this Sunday at home against the Helsinki 69ers, an important game for us as we continue to chase 1st place in the league.

Indians Third Win

Our fourth game went much better than the third game. We played at home for the second straight week, against the Kuopio Steelers. We started the game off strong offensively, easily driving down and scoring on our first possession. The touchdown was a great catch by fellow American Matt Shepherd, he was pretty far out of bounds, but luckily for us our side judges were 14 years old and from Kouvola. Unfortunately, the Steelers reciprocated that and knotted the game 7-7.
Our offense moved the ball effectively all game, but we struggled inside our opponents 30 yard line. We scored once in the second quarter to move to 14-7 on a nice pass from Nesi Carpelan to Jani Heinisalo (Picture right), his first of two touchdowns on the game. After the first drive defensively we decided to switch to a 4-4 defense rather than our normal 3-4. Essentially we added a defensive lineman since the Steelers really only ran the ball in an option attack all game.

This new defense did very well, and we didn’t allow the Steelers to score again. I came in on offense a good amount mostly as a running back in the I formation. Thanks to some great blocking by our offensive like and fullback Ville Lindsten. I carried the ball 12 times for 113 yards, unfortunately none of them landed me in the endzone. I also added 6 solo and 4 assisted tackle on the defensive side of the ball.
I also did a few plays as a wildcat quarterback, and on one roll out pass I saw an open receiver about 10 yards in front of me. The ball was complete and it seemed like a great gain. Unfortunately, the player I threw it to was none other than Perttu Kontkanen, our right tackle. For those of you not familiar with the rules, that is not exactly street legal.
As time winded down in the 4th quarter the Steelers continued to try to run the ball, and did so with a little bit of success. When they did try to throw, they showed that they were unable to do so. We made them pay with great interceptions by Tatu Niemi, and Jarno Uitto. Perttu was given our team MVP of the game, and Jani was given the game MVP. That is it for this week, we now enter our midsummer bye week sitting in 2nd place at 3-1.

Ben's Third Week

In week three I am now fully in the groove of what life will be like this summer. We coach the junior team 3 times per week, and we practice four times per week. Usually these are all in the evenings, sometimes as late as 8 pm since the sun doesn’t go down until midnight. During the daytimes Matt and I usually work out at a local gym, and enjoy our homemade Finnish food at Kulma’s Monday-Friday.
This past weekend was a lot of fun besides getting our butts kicked on the football field. Following the game a few teammates came back to our apartment and we showed them ‘beer pong’ (Beirut). This was the first time these Finns had played and we whooped up on them pretty good. Then there was a private party for our team and Indians alumni at a bar. Since the Indians were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the team a lot of alumni came back to celebrate. It was fun and interesting to meet players from the past, and hear about how different the organization used to be.
On Sunday we took a trip down to the city of Kotka, which is on the coast of Finland. Our Qb Nesi has a summer cottage on an island just off the shores of the city, so we went down there for the day. It was beautiful weather, and the island was very nice. We took a ferry over, and once there we enjoyed some backyard games, and riding a four-wheeler through small trails on the island. One of the games reminded me of the game Kubb (a version of which was created by my sister Meghan and hopefully many of you have or will enjoy a game sometime), where players attempted to knock over pieces of wood in order to score points.

Looking forward to the next few weeks as we have another game this Saturday against the Kuopio Steelers. Then the following weekend is midsummer celebrations. This is the all-day, all-weekend party that happens every year on the weekend closest to June 21st. This is because the sun is out for the longest during this day, which I guess in turn means we shouldn’t be sleeping that weekend.

Game Three

Our third game was a disappointing loss to the Vantaa Taft 36-6. The game started off well, we decided to try to surprise them with a little wildcat. I was playing quarterback for the first 5 or 6 plays of the drive, and we were running the ball pretty effectively, and caught them off guard with one pass. We went back to our regular offense and unfortunately failed to move the ball further than our opponents 25 in the drive. On fourth down our quarterback was hit as he was throwing causing a bad pass, which was intercepted and returned to our own 3 yard line.
Taft was able to score in just two plays with such good field position. Our offense was never truly able to move the ball deep into Taft territory for the remainder of the half. Defensively we tried to stop the bleeding, but we still went into the half down 16-0.
Defensively we were able to slow down Taft’s offense, but we couldn’t make the necessary plays on 3rd down in order to get off the field and put our offense in good position. Offensively drives were falling apart, and we were not helped by our four turnovers to their zero turnovers. Our only glimmer of hope was a 10-play 65 yard drive that ended with me running into the end zone from 1 yard out. This made the score 23-6 as we failed to make the extra point.
Taft went on to methodically score 14 more points in the 4th quarter, as we continued to be plagued by turnovers on offense. It was disappointing to see such a lopsided score as the Indians were celebrating this being its 25th season, and there were many alumni in attendance. After the game my teammate Jukka Lautamatti, (picture right) was awarded MVP of the Indians, and I was awarded MVP of the game. My personal stat line was: 45 yards rushing on 8 attempts, 1 td. Passing 2-2 for 41 yards, 5 solo tackles 1 assist, with one tackle for loss. It was interesting to see awards be given out on the field directly after the game. It wasn’t done after our game in Helsinki last week, so perhaps it is a Indians tradition.

Overall there are tons of mistakes for us to learn from if we are going to have a hope of beating this well coached Taft team. It is certainly not impossible though, and we will see them again in our last regular season game July 25th.

Ben's Second Week

I have really been able to settle down during my second week, as I started to get into the groove of coaching and playing. Matt and I usually coach about three times a week for an hour and a half each time. This has been a fun and challenging experience. The kids range from 9-16 and they represent the full spectrum from being brand new to the game, to having played for a number of years.
One day Matt and I went to an elementary school to teach football to a group of about 25 boys. We were very excited to see that seven of these boys came out to practice with the junior teams two days later. Many of these young boys show a lot of promise, and something our junior teams need more than anything is numbers.
On Friday night before our game Matt and I were invited to our head coaches apartment for dinner. His name is Ilpo Temonen he was a long time player for the Indians, now the head coach, and his photo you see below. The meal was fantastic, and we watched video of games from the Indians last season. The following day we had the trip down to Helsinki for our game, and you can read my game summary to hear more about that.

The celebration following the game was a lot of fun, many of the players and coaches went to a bar together and had a great time. The next day Matt and I went to our teammates, Janne Siltanen, lake house for the day. The weather was great as it has been for the past week now, and it was very nice to be in the sun, although the water was still very cold. At the lake house there is a sauna that we used. We were alternating between 5 or 10 minutes in the sauna, to jumping in the cold lake water. On our last trip into the sauna it was quite hot, and we threw a lot of water on the stones to create a bunch of steam. Maybe its because I sweat so much, but once that steam hit my skin I began to feel a burning sensation and really lost my cool. I started yelling that I needed to get out of the sauna immediately, and everyone was laughing at me. No harm done though, perhaps I’m just a little sensitive to getting burned, (For non-family members: I poured a pot of boiling water on my head when I was 5, hospital for nine days, only memory- being in a big silver tub and having someone scrap my skin off with steel wool…) Regardless, it was a great day and I look forward to many more times at Finnish lakes, known as the land of a thousand lakes.
The mosquitos around dusk here (11 pm) have been pretty terrible. They seem to be bigger and badder than anything I was used to in the states. There also does not seem to be any good solution other than just staying indoors, luckily they are not our for many hours during the day. Matt and I are also helping coach at a sports camp this week. We are helping three hours on Tuesday, 1.5 Wednesday, and 1.5 Thursday. This will help us get a little bit of extra food/beer money. These kids are much younger than those on the junior teams, and that has proved to be even more challenging. That’s because these little ones have not yet begun studying English, so it is necessary for us to have a counselor translate constantly. On top of this the counselors don’t know the game of football either, so the general football language is tough on them too.
We have enjoyed some great dinners this week at Satu Yrjanne’s house, she is the sister of the aforementioned Janne Siltanen. This has been a big help, as Matt and I haven’t really been keeping the fridge stocked too well. I have also booked a trip to Oslo for later this month. Looking forward to meeting up with Tony Torres while I’m there, as well as some friends that I met while abroad in Perth, Australia. We have a big game this weekend with the only other undefeated team in the league, Vantaa Taft, and it is our first game at home. The Indians will be celebrating their 25th season at our home game on Saturday. Sorry I have no more pictures, Matt has some and he will be contributing to the blog shortly.

Ben's First Game

The second game of the season for the Kuovola Indians was a victory, 13-7. This was my first game playing as the season opener was during Trinity College graduation, which I felt obligated to attend. The game in Finland has its similarities and its differences from the level of football I had grown accustomed to in the NESCAC. Athletically I would say it is pretty close. Each team has a decent amount of skill players on both sides of the football that are able to make some good plays. Size and strength wise it is apparent that there is not a whole lot of off season weight training, as is to be expected because the majority of players also have full time employment.

            There is not too much game planning leading up to the games, although we did go a week earlier and watch our opponent, The Helsinki 69ers, play against another team. This meant that it was important to make adjustments during the game to try to stop what the opponents are doing. For me being defensive minded this meant adjusting to formations that I had not seen before. The 69ers had a good amount of success running the football against us, and we were getting out flanked by certain formations. We adjusted the alignment of our linebackers, and this got us some success. It was frustrating for me to see a team successfully run the football, as I was a part of division 3’s #1 rushing defense in the country in 2010.

            That being said we were able to keep the 69ers out of the end zone until the middle of the fourth quarter. Our offense was highlighted by some great passes by our quarterback Nesi Carpelan . We were able to pass the ball effectively all game, but we also had our struggles putting the ball into the end zone. Due to some injuries and a thin roster we put our backup quarterback in at wide receiever. His name is Hank, and he is only 16 years young. He scored his first ever touchdown in the senior league on Saturday on a deep pass from Nesi. Our other score was a reception by fellow American Matt Shepherd on a precise double move in the end zone.

            The 69ers had the ball with a few minutes to go and were moving it down the field fairly effectively. As the clock ticked away they began hail-mary passes, and I knocked down the final one as time expired. To the dismay of the Helsinki players no pass interference was called, but there was a lot of arguing in Finnish going on for about five minutes as the referees tried to figure out what to call. It was difficult throughout the game to argue with the referees, as they cannot understand me. What makes it worse is that I see them make incorrect calls and I can do very little about it, that will take some getting used to as I have been in constant communication with referees during the pass two seasons as captain with the Bantams. That is it for my first game, this Saturday June 11 we play the Vantaa Taft, the only other undefeated team in the league.