Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The Small World of the IFL and Ventura County

David Lassen NEEDS to cover the Catania vs. Parma game!

If you have been following this blog you know that I am involved with the Catania Elephants, an American football team, playing in the Italian Football League. The IFL is made up of the top nine teams in Italy. Over 50 teams all over the country are playing football in leagues based on their various levels of proficiency but the IFL is king.

Besides the Elefanti, the other 8 IFL teams are the Ancona Dolphins, the Bergamo Lions, the Bologna Doves, the Bolzano Giants, the Milan Rhinos, the Palermo Corsari, the Palermo Sharks and the Parma Panthers.

So, approximately 12,000 miles away from Ventura County what would be the odds that three people with Ventura County ties would all be involved in the 2008 IFL season?

On Sunday, May 25 the Parma Panthers will travel to Catania for a 3:00 p.m. kickoff. I will be acting as the Defensive Coordinator of the hometown Elefanti. If you don't know, I've been coaching high school football since 1970 at four different Ventura County high schools (Thousand Oaks H.S., Westlake H.S., Buena H.S. and Rio Mesa H.S.).

The Parma Panthers will feature WR Cory Mazza out of Thousand Oaks H.S. and Harvard University. Also, James Bonelli who went to St. Bonaventure H.S. and Notre Dame University will be playing on their offensive line.

What were the odds? I think that an enterprising newspaper, like the Ventura County Star, should send a crackerjack sportswriter like David Lassen to cover this great human interest story. What do you think?

3 comments:

DPLassen said...

I'll forward this to the appropriate decision-makers (cup your ear and turn westward and you should be able to hear the laughter), but I suspect it's more likely we may be deputizing you as a stringer to keep us informed on this.

By the way, subjecting your readers to that photo is a horrible thing to do. I bet Google Analytics will show the number of hits nosedives today. ...

Ciao, David

George said...

This could be Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, convince the powers that be!

What would William Randolph Hearst do? Hell, what would Pattie Hearst do?

DPLassen said...

Well, Patty would probably show up with a submachine gun -- which would be no big deal at a soccer game, but might cause a stir in the IFL -- and ol' WR would probably try to get the U.S to declare war on Italy. I'm not quite sure that's the kind of coverage you're looking for.