Story By: Erin Zollars
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
On Friday night at Verizon Center, usually you can find a Wizards or Caps game or even a concert, but tonight was a little bit of different for D.C, Arena football. In the inaugural game for the five-team league’s two newest squads, it was not hard to tell which was ready to make something happen quickly and the Valor was that team.
For their first 30 minutes, the Baltimore Brigade looked like a bunch of pick-up guys off the street, one player didn’t even have his name on the back of the jersey and they looked helpless on defense, punchless on offense and generally less than ready for anything remotely close to the first week into professional indoor football.
The Valor struggled a bit in the second half, and the Bridgade seemed to wake up in the second half gave the game life and the team hope, but it was for naught in a 51-38 loss before an announced crowd of 15,749.
The Valor had a commanding lead at halftime, 34-6 and it appeared the Bridgade were not even going to show up with their youngest in the AFL roster.
“We obviously dug ourselves a pretty big hole there in the beginning,” Brigade Head Coach Omarr Smith said.
If the Valor can keep up the crowds, this may be a great summer draw for the Wizards, but for Baltimore, there just is not enough fans so far. They have sold a whopping 500 season tickets and had little or no fan presence tonight. All of these people were Washington Sports fans of some type.
