I need a football fix! A little GEFA action

Tagged under: News, Non-PIAA

Greg Ricupero | August 16, 2020

Sargent’s Stadium at the Point Johnstown Pa
GEFA Week 3 Jefferson County Jaguars @ Flood City Thunder

JC Jaguars 16-0-0-6=22
FC Thunder 13-0-8-0=21

I haven’t been to a football game since March when he XFL folded due to the pandemic. I didn’t get to go north in July to see the two CFL games, I had made plans to see. The High School football season is on hold. What should I do? Wait, someone is playing. The GEFA (Great Eastern Football Association) a Semi-Pro 8 man football league with 17 teams in two conferences. I’m about 30 miles from two teams. They are the Johnstown based Flood City Thunder and the Punxsutawney based Jefferson County Jaguars. The Jaguars are in their 4th year in the league under owner/coach/player David Rotsch. The Thunder were playing their second game ever for owner Georgianne Matava.

Who’s playing in the GEFA? Football guys of any age who have a passion for playing football and don’t want to quit playing. Look at the season, it was suppose to start in March but the pandemic stopped those plans. The players wanted to play and fast forward to August. The schedule has been shorten and will be conference play only, but they are playing. Jefferson County can’t get officials and will play all their games on the road. The Thunder had to play on the road week one due to a scheduling conflict at the stadium. These players are use to overcoming problems. The game had it’s own issues. The Thunder had to turn fans away because their was a 250 person cap on attendance due to the virus. The game clock had to be rest numerous times because it would just be running. The score on the scoreboard was unreadable due to burnt out lights and the announcer and score keepers had different scores.

Eight man football is football with 8 players playing instead of the usual eleven. The offensive lines are 3 players instead of five. It’s played on a 50 by 30 yard field. There are no field goals or kicked conversions.
There are other slight rule differences about blitzing and a few other things. After a touchdown the scoring team can try for 1 or 2 points from the three yard line. If you run for it you get one point. If you pass for it you get two.

The Game
Let me first say it was a great game. I really enjoyed the entire day even thru I spent half of it in a constant light rain. I was expecting a high scoring games, after all both teams had loss to Moshannon Valley Vikings the last two weeks. The Thunder loss week one 67-19. The Jaguars loss last week 106-28.
The first quarter started like it was going to be a shoot out. The Jaguars scored on a TD pass from Dane Bright to Coy Donahue. The cross field pass for two was good and JC led 8-0. The Thunder drove down the field and score on a Wanyai Mayo keeper. Coach/Back Matt Speed then ran for the conversion. This ended up being the issue. The scoreboard said 8-8, the one scorekeeper had it 8-7 Thunder. The one ref correctly had it 8-7 Jaguars. You might read in the newspaper it was 8-8 . It was not. The Jaguars scored again on a Jihad Bennett TD catch and passed for the conversion for a 16-7 lead. The Thunder quickly answered on a long TD pass from Mayo to Trey Andrews. The conversion failed and the Thunder trailed 16-13. The crowd and the announcers thought it was 16-14. The last few minutes of the first quarter and the entire second quarter was a defensive struggle and half came with the Jaguars up 2.

Both quarterbacks were beaten up in the second quarter and both teams came out after the half trying to control the line of scrimmage and establish a running game. Mayo would not finish the game for FC. Both teams moved the ball but couldn’t score until Speed scored on 3rd and inches from inside the JC one late in the 3rd. The two point conversion made it 21-16 Thunder. The Jaguars started the 4th quarter by driving straight down the field and Bennett gave them the lead as he burst through the middle of the line for a 5 yard TD. The conversion failed but JC led 22-21. Flood City then took the ball and drove to the Jaguars 3. But 4 straight runs from inside the 5 were stuffed by a swarming Jaguars defense. With about six minutes to go JC drove from their 2 to inside the Thunder 10 before turning it over on downs. The weird thing about the drive was they seemed to run their plays very quickly not trying to milk the clock. This allowed the Thunder to save their timeouts. The Thunder got the ball back with just over 2 minutes to go and were able to drive inside the Jaguars 20 but turned it over on downs as a 4th down pass fell incomplete. The Jaguars ran 1 play out of the victory formation and it was over. The Thunder really struggled running inside the tackles as Jaguar DT Micah McConnell had a monster game clogging up the running lanes and causing chaos in the Thunder backfield. Jaguar RB Jihad Bennett had a huge game running and catching the check down passes. Thunder Matt Speed seems to be all over the field on offense and defense.

I had a great time. Both teams still have plenty of season to play. Admission is only $5, Sargent’s Stadium at the Point is a great place to watch a game. The stadium has a lot of history and is well worth a visit. So check out the Thunder. The fans were great, cheering at all the right times even thru it rained most of the day. The referees did an outstanding job considering tempers were high in a hard fought game. Congratulations to all the players for keeping their love of the game alive. Best of Luck to both teams the rest of the year!