Lightning Football News...

The Lightning are 2-0 after the first two games of this season and will play the #1 ranked team in the state (8-Man Football) this Saturday when the Lightning travel to Riverside to take on the Riverside Christian Cougars. More on that later....Let's talk about the Bloomington game.

The Lightning came into tonight's game 4-TD underdogs and some even believed that the Lightning would not make it to half time and would be beaten by 45 points. Obviously those people have never been to Lightning stadium on a home-game night. There were at least 600+ Lightning fans cheering for the team every time the game got close, which was most of the game. The Lightning only won by 2 points, 24-22. But at home, the Lightning are almost flawless, having won 14 straight home games until they lost to Riverside Christian last year in the Championship game. The Lighting are 16-2 at home since the opening of Lightning Stadium in the 2000 season.

The T.K.O was moving the ball well behind the running of Stephen Wilcox and Tony Garrido and an occasional pass from Tim Krapivkin to Chris Bridenstine or Kevin Adair. The offense looked much better than they did against Southlands Christian a week ago.

But it was the defense that impressed this writer tonight. The defense looked in top physical condition and they took over in the fourth quarter as the other team started to run out of gas. Dustin Pourtemour and Bryan Bates were causing a lot damage in the BC backfield while Jordan Leichtner and Kyle Cleveland stopped the outside runs. The only luck BC had was using misdirection plays that took away the quickness of the defense. Bridenstine was outstanding tonight and should have got a game ball if they hand them out. He played well on both sides of the ball.

Bloomington was one heck of a team. They had a very good running attack and a QB that was real slippery. The Blue Ravens Offensive game plan was working well for them until Lightning struck in the form of Bridenstine who ran a fumble in for a quick score. Bloomington looked a little stunned after that play but managed to march down the field and score. But the Lightning had one more secret weapon, the foot of Kevin Adair who kicked the winning field goal. The reason it was a secret weapon is... Kevin has never kicked a field goal in practice, so the coaches did not know if he could do it or not. Way to go Kevin!

Now, back to the Riverside Christian game. The game starts at 1:00PM. The winner of this game will be the favorite to go all the way to the championship so we need everyone to come out and support the team. This will be the best game you will see all year! Don't miss it!