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The Syracuse Shock will break its first huddle of the 2012 season on Saturday, June 9, at G. Ray Bodley High School in Fulton with cooks, textile workers, a Syracuse University student adviser and a radio host in its ranks. The opponent is the South Buffalo Celtics. Despite its semiprofessional status, this football team expects to win, and with good reason. The 2011 Shock went 10-0 in Empire Football League (EFL) play, scoring 348 points for the duration of the season. By contrast, its opponents averaged less than seven points per game.
“Our expectation every year is to go to a national title game and win,” said head coach and team president Ken Anderson about the team that has been around under different nicknames and ownership dating back to 1978.
Fulfilling that goal would not be without precedent. In fact, the team has as much of a winning tradition as any team in the area not coached by Jim Boeheim. The franchise, a longtime staple of the national rankings, has bounced between regional and national leagues throughout its decades-long history, winning the national championship in 2004 as the Central New York Express.
While the Shock franchise again harbors national ambitions, the team faces stiff competition within the EFL. The Vermont Ice Storm and the Montreal Voyageurs are the only teams in the eight-team league that don’t call upstate New York home. Although Syracuse won the regular-season title last season, they came up short in the league championship game against the Albany Metro Mallers. Albany was ranked No. 10 in the Northeast in the National Football Events (NFE)’s Jan. 20 season-ending coaches poll; the Shock came in at No. 12
Yet the Shock team faces plenty of its own internal struggles. Last year Anderson and Al Ladd, the team’s vice president, invested $10,000 of their own money covering team expenses. Players pay a $125 registration fee to help offset the team’s costs, and while most regular-season games are contested in New York, the players are responsible for their own transportation to and from games.
“Everybody would love to be able to pay 15 {hundred dollars} to two grand for a bus to go to games, but no, we carpool,” right guard Jamie Hantke said. “I mean, you know, guys’ll drive and it’s, it’s tough. I mean, you know, games you get there early, you get dressed, you get jacked up just like any in other sport you would.”
For some, the Shock is a last-chance saloon for sidetracked professional ambitions—a place to win games for one’s hometown team, sure, but also to be noticed by Canadian Football League (CFL) or Arena Football League (AFL) scouts who have been known to come out to semipro games in search of untapped talent. For others, it represents a rare outlet to play a game that often is unavailable to players shortly after they become legal adults.
E.J. Maeweather, a middle linebacker, is entering his third season with the club. He played his first in 2007 while he was between colleges after family issues and concerns for his grandmother’s health forced him to leave Tennessee State University, a Division-I Football Championship Series program. In January 2008 Maeweather, currently a student adviser at SU, went back to school, this time at SUNY Morrisville. He graduated from Morrisville in May and, like many of his teammates, is working to pull himself out of the cracks that many high-level football talents slip through.
“It takes a lot to get noticed professionally when you’re not playing at that big stage like at an SU or at a University of Michigan. It takes a lot. It’s hard, it’s hard,” Maeweather said. “We got guys who got the talent, it’s just about them wanting to pursue it, taking it to the next level. I know a lot of guys have other issues that might have stopped them from pursuing it, families and children and stuff like that. But you know, the Shock is a very good alternative for those who didn’t get the opportunity and still want to play ball.”
Scouts have been known to come to Shock games, and as players heard whispers about an AFL team potentially coming to Syracuse, the professional incentive only increased. While Maeweather noted that he now has more time to devote to pro tryouts and sending his personal highlight reel around the country, his focus remains on the Shock.
The roster is made up of players ranging from ages 19 to the early 40s. The younger players have little problem physically recovering between games. For the older players, however, it’s not so easy. At times, they all struggle to make practices and occasionally games as they balance their day jobs and family lives with their time spent with the Shock.
Playing for the Shock tests families, too. “A lot of these guys have kids and girlfriends and that kind of stuff. They make sure they get their family time in, but Saturday nights the families know it’s game time,” said Hantke, whose day job is as deejay Big Smoothie on WAQX-FM 95.7 (95X).
Ultimately, the biggest toll is taken on the players’ bodies. “On the way home you stop at a Thruway stop, try to get some food in you, try to get some water in you,” said Hantke, 33. “You know you’re going to be hurting on the way home so you just kind of deal with it.”
Still, for Hantke, it’s worth the hassle. “It’s one of those things. It’s for a serious love of the game, you know what I mean? Because we put our bodies through a lot, but you don’t even care about that. It’s a game that you’ve been playing since you were a kid. It’s fun, you know?”
Shock Waves
Tickets are $8 for general admission; $5 for seniors and students with ID; children age 12 and younger are free. Tickets are sold at all home games, which are played at Bodley High School, 6 William Gillard Drive, Fulton.
Season tickets cost $50 through the July 14 game with Lockport. After that, all remaining home games cost $40. Season-ticket packages come with a free T-shirt. For more information about the club, visit syracuseshock.com.
