American football requires physique and mind

Let's hope the people of Dupnitsa catch the bug for this sport too, said Team Sofia manager Ivo Ikonomov during his visit to the town

Ivo Ikonomov (left) and Aleksandar squared up against each other.

American football may regularly score touchdowns in the hearts of the Yanks, but in Bulgaria it fights for every yard in front of the public like an amateur facing a wall of professional defenders. Because the most popular game across the Atlantic is still looking for its fans and players here.
This spectacular game demands not only physical strength and speed, but also discipline and brains. Hard as it may be to believe, a team's tactics matter more than muscle and equipment. That is why the players say that equipment comes last. First comes hard training for body and mind. And if you are lucky, one day the cheerleaders will be chanting your name too.

“A team is only as strong as its weakest player,” says Aleksandar Kenanov of Team Sofia.

The American football squad is split into two sub-teams that tour the country promoting the sport. The exhibition match between the “Saints”* and the “Dragons”* at the baseball stadium in the Bistritsa neighbourhood of Dupnitsa showed why the boys' motto is “No Excuses”.

Because even in a friendly match like this one, and on a sunny day like this Sunday, the will to win comes above everything else, and there are no excuses for failure.

“Our aim is to develop the nation's sporting spirit and to spread American football, because it requires not only keeping physically strong but also thinking. Unfortunately, most young people stay at home and pay little attention to sport. Otherwise, there is interest. We see that for ourselves when we go around the towns playing exhibition matches. At the moment there are teams in Sofia, Blagoevgrad, Pleven and Lom. Our idea is for Dupnitsa to have a team as well,” explained Team Sofia manager Ivo Ikonomov, who is also one of the most big-hearted players on the field.

“American football involves a lot of collisions, explosiveness. But you also have to be able to think and stick to the tactics. 11 players line up against 11 on the field. One side is on offence, the other on defence. The offence has four attempts to gain 10 yards; if it succeeds, it gets another four attempts. That is how you get to the end of the field. A touchdown is worth 6 points. The defence's goal is to stop the offence. The moment the offence fails to gain the yards, the ball goes over to the defence and the sides swap places,” Aleksandar Kenanov explained simply the otherwise complicated rules of the game (or at least complicated for us Bulgarians).

“Our team has had American coaches. We also have several Bulgarian ones. These are people who have played abroad and have been involved in the sport for years. Our team is at an average European level,” adds Aleksandar, who led the “younger ones” on the field in Dupnitsa.

Last year the Bulgarians beat the champions of Romania and the champions of the Serbian “B” group. “For now only the Turks are holding out against us, but soon we will beat them too,” No. 55 goes on.

According to the boys, children can start training in American football at the age of 5. That is how it is in the USA. But before mothers' hair turns grey, let us make clear that children and women play a variant of American football – flag football. Unlike the full-contact version it is safer, but otherwise it demands the same qualities – speed, discipline and thinking.

In it, flags are attached to the belt, and instead of players crashing into each other to bring someone down, all you need to do is grab the flag of whoever has the ball at that moment.

“Otherwise the rules are the same, but there is no contact, and that is why this variant is popular among women in Europe. Flag football is also very well suited to team building, because the team has to work as one,” adds Ivo Ikonomov, who has been playing American football for 15 years.

He says the athletes keep in shape with sets of exercises.

The boys from Sofia are trained by the national squash champion.

“The most important things are speed and explosiveness. The whole body has to be developed and you need quick reactions. It's not like standing in the gym building muscle,” Ikonomov adds.

The Sofia team includes dentists, lawyers, university students, school pupils… They are not professional players, but they strive for a professional level.

That is why they play not only during the main spring season, when the matches in Europe are played, but in the autumn too.
“Our federation is a member of the European Federation of American Football. At the moment there is an idea to set up several leagues. That way we would be in the Balkan League with Turkey, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. The idea is for the winner of the domestic championship to play against the Central European group. And finally for the winners of the individual leagues to meet,” Ikonomov explains.

*Translated: Saints and Dragons

Author: Desislava Panayotova-Yankova

Source: DenNews.bg