Horsemen vs. Blizzard

The Horsemen had a big game this past Saturday against the Green Bay Blizzard. Winning it would secure them a place in the playoffs. This was probably easily the best game I have seen all season. Both teams were on top of their game and almost equally matched. The game was close near the beginning, but then Green Bay got a lot of scores and were leading 34-14 at half time. Things looked very grim. the horsemen really turned on their ‘A game’ when they came back on the field for the second half. It seemed like the team as a whole was cohesively working together toward a win that they really wanted, and that they really needed.

Coach Mike Harmon had this to say on HorsemenFootball.com:

“I’m typically not a big yeller, but I challenged our guys at halftime,” Horsemen head coach Mike Harmon said. “We told our players at halftime that Green Bay was playing for the title and we were just watching. Everyone got their minds right and really performed in the second half. We had a lot of great individual efforts.”

The Horsemen came back from their 20 point deficit and tied the Blizzard sending the game into overtime. Fans were going crazy. the players were really excited and provoking the fans to make more noise. The Horsemen won the coin toss and elected to have Green Bay receive the ball first. Greenbay battled hard and ended up coming up with a touchdown, making them ahead of the Horsemen by seven points. The Horsemen struck back with some amazing plays giving them a touchdown for themselves. Now came the clutch decision, should they risk a loss and go for the two point conversion for the win? they opted to go for the two point conversion. When they got a penalty it put everyone on their edge of their seats. Luckily it wasn’t bad so they set up for an attempt. With an amazing play they managed to get the two point conversion and end the game.

The Horsemen’s win against Green Bay put them in a tie for first place in the af2 American Conference Midwest Division. I have to give credit where credit is due and say that the Green Bay Blizzard really brought an amazing fight. I don’t think anyone likes to see one team walk all over the other and I think what made this game so good was that both teams were playing at their best and really challenging each other. This Saturday’s game is sure to be excellent as well. It also happens to be the Horsemen’s last home game of the season, so I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t made it out to a game before.

Below are photos from the Horsemen vs. Blizzard game:

Horsemen Knockout Ticket Giveaway

*THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED*

That’s right, we are back again with another blog giveaway. This time around the Horsemen Football is helping us to hook you all up with an awesome experience for you and your friends. There are two more home games left for the Horsemen. Two lucky winners (one for each game) chosen at random will win themselves 4 tickets to the game. Not only will you get to go to the game, but the winner and one of his/her guests will be brought on field during one of the breaks in the game to box each other with over-sized boxing gloves. The winner of the boxing match will win 14 free passes to LA Boxing at Brannon Crossing.

The rules are simple as always:

- Leave a comment on this post

- In your comment, tell us something different you’d like to see at a Horsemen Football game

- Be sure to leave the comment with an email address you check frequently, since that will be how we will contact you if you are one of the winners.

The giveaway will end at 5:00pm EST on Thursday, July 10. After it is over, we will take all the entries and have our super-awesome-state of the art-crazy-monkey operated-random-post comment-picker-machine determine a winner. We have trained our monkey well, and if he detects that someone has entered more than once then not only will they be disqualified, but they will get bad luck for 5 years and a visit from the IRS. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment, so be sure to enter ONLY ONCE.

The final two Horsemen Football games are on July 12 at 7:30pm and July 19 at 7:30pm. We hope that even if you aren’t one of the lucky winners, you will still come out and join us and help cheer them on when they are boxing. Good luck to all who enter!

More info about LA Boxing - LABoxing.com :: More info about the Horsemen - HorsemenFootball.com

Interview With Susan Harris, Horsemen Football Director of Public Relations

The Horsemen are in the hunt for the playoffs and every win counts for a lot. I was able to sit down with their Director of Public Relations, Susan Harris, and ask her some questions about the Horsemen as well as just arena football in general. Read more

Horsemen vs. Conquest

This past Saturday the Lexington Horseman squared off against the Albany Conquest. The game was excellent, from start to finish. There were plenty of exciting plays such as last second touchdowns, interceptions and a safety. Coach Mike Harmon had this to say about the game (from the Lexington Horsemen Website):

“It was very exciting tonight,” Horsemen head coach Mike Harmon said. “There was definitely no quit in either of the teams. Both teams needed a victory because we were both on losing streaks. It showed in some respects and we still made some mistakes, but, all-in-all, it was a decent effort tonight.”

With a minute left, the Horsemen were only ahead by one touchdown and the Conquest had the ball. The Horsemen defense made a clutch play and sacked the quarterback in the endzone getting a safety and extending the lead by 2 more points. Albany almost got another touchdown but was denied from a penalty. I had ole trusty camera with me at the game and took a lot of photos which can be found up on our Flickr site in the Albany Conquest set. Below are four of the photos that I took of the game.

If you were at the game and took photos then we would love to see them. Send us an email and either attach the photos or link us to them. There are only a two more Horsemen homegames left in the season, both in July, so if you haven’t had a chance to come and see them then you should do your best to come. If you are not a member of our First in Line club then you may want to join now since we are working on some exciting promotional things for the remaining Horsemen games. The tickets are cheap, the seats are great, and the games are very exciting. See you on July 12 when they face off against the Green Bay Blizzard.

Lexington Horsemen vs. Peoria Pirates

This last Saturday, the Lexington Horsemen played their second game of the season against the Pirates from Peoria, IL. The game was all about defense. It was great to see a game with such a low score in a sport that usually warrants scores of more than 100 for each team. The Horsemen are prized for their defense, and introduce the starters one at a time at the beginning of the game, when usually teams focus on their offensive starters. On Saturday though, the defenses on both teams were extremely tough which made for an interesting game with lots of surprises.

The game started out with the Horsemen leading 7 to 6 in the first quarter. The next quarter, the Pirates fought hard and scored two more touchdowns to the Horsemen’s one, making the score 14 to 20 going in to halftime. At this point of the game I happen to be sitting in a seat next to some people who were passing through Lexington and decided to catch a game. One of them asked “Aren’t these games supposed to have ridiculously high scores, with scoring back and forth all game?” It hadn’t really dawned on me until that point. This game was going at about the same pace as an NFL game, but with a much smaller field. That just pays tribute to the amazing defenses on both sides of the field. Although there was some scoring, it was nothing compared to an average AFL game. The scores stayed low in the third quarter as well, with the Horsemen getting 7 more points, and Peoria missing another extra point to get 6 more points, making it still a close game at 21 to 26. Unfortunately it was the fourth quarter where the Horsemen came undone. There were a few mistakes made, which is all Peoria needed to steal the game away. The Pirates won the game, 46 to 28. A lot of the Pirates success came from the outstanding job that number 7 on their team, Kofi Amoah did at Defensive Back and on special teams. It made one wonder if he was drinking the same water as another great Illinois defender, Brian Urlacher.

I made a panoramic of a series of photos I took from one of the corners on the floor. Click the images below to view the extremely LARGE version. Who knows, maybe you can pick yourself out in the crowd.

As mentioned during last week’s recap, I was working to get access to the floor to snap some more photos of the game. The Horsemen staff was more than accommodating, so I was able to take a whole slew of photos from the sidelines of the game. I went ahead and uploaded them all to our Flickr account and placed them in a Horsemen collection along with a few of the photos I snapped from last week. Here are some of the ones you can find in that collection.

The next home game for the Lexington Horsemen is May 10 against Mahoning Valley Thunder at 7:30. I will be field-side snapping some more pictures for the blog. Be sure to bring your game face and your cowbell and you may find your way into one of our game albums or even in the recap.

Lexington Horsemen Opening Game

This past Saturday, the Lexington Horsemen had their opening game for the season against the Thunder Birds of Daytona Beach. Not only was it opening night, but it was Student night. Student tickets were only $5, beers were discounted, and even the Fillies were supporting their schools by wearing shirts from their respective universities. The Horsemen had some new players, a new coach, a new field, in a new league and were ready to set the bar high.

Right off the bat, or should I say the stitching on the ball, they managed to score two touchdowns in the first quarter while holding the Thunder Birds to no scores. While Daytona Beach did manage to score a touchdown in the second quarter (but missed the extra point), the Horsemen extended their lead by another touchdown by racking up another 13 points. The third quarter played much like the second. There were a lot of nice plays by both teams and some exceptional tackles. Daytona Beach scored another 6 points, but the Horsemen yet again extended their lead by getting 14 more points, now leading the game 41 to 12. As a nice dollop of icing on top of the cake, the Horsemen defense held Daytona Beach to no scores in the last quarter, while the offense grabbed another touchdown, closing the game with a 48 to 12 Horseman victory. Since I attended the game, so did my camera (although it didn’t eat nearly as many pretzels as I did). I was able to snap some photos from my seat that captured some of the atmosphere of the game. Here are some below. Enjoy!

For the next home game (this Saturday versus the Peoria Pirates) I plan to snap some shots from the floor which will allow for me to get a lot more action photos. Stay tuned for more Horsemen coverage here on the blog, and stop by our team page on the Rupp Arena website to view the schedule and ticket prices. Great start Horsemen! Good luck in the next home game this Saturday.