The Punishers’ Treasure “Repeat” Tobe, right, runs toward the quarterback for A Battery, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, to try and pull his flag before he completes a pass. Photo by Dustin Perry.
C-RAM Punishers lead football standings after 35-15 win Tuesday
Dustin Perry
Editor
The Punishers of Task Force Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar ended the undefeated streak of one team and extended their own when they smashed A Battery, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 35-15 in flag football Tuesday.
As of that game, the Punishers now lead the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade league standings and are all but poised to make good on their promise to win back-to-back championship titles.
“This is a great season for us,” said Treasure “Repeat” Tobe, the Punishers’ motor-mouthed offensive lineman, in a post-game interview. “We’re going to keep going. The post champions are here.”
The Punishers certainly played like champions against the outmatched A/4 ADA squad. A touchdown pass caught in the end zone by Tommy Foster on the second play of the game, followed by a successful extra point attempt, put them up 7-0 in a matter of minutes.
After regaining possession of the ball when the A/4 ADA offensive line failed to stage a scoring run or convert the fourth down, the Punishers committed their only true misstep of the game: a safety stemming from an offensive snap that was bobbled and eventually dropped in the opposing end zone by the quarterback.
The Punishers’ Lamar Green, right, runs with the ball as a trio of defenders from A Battery, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, attempt to pull his flag in the first half of a flag football game Tuesday. Photo by Dustin Perry.
That single mistake seemed to momentarily put the Punishers off their rhythm, causing some mild inter-team quibbling and allowing A/4 ADA’s Gene Muniz to score after catching a short pass and running it past a few defenders. However, a pair of impressive conversions in the final minutes of the first half saw the spark returning to the Punishers’ game.
First, Foster garnered his second touchdown of the night on a risky fourth-down play more than 15 yards from the end zone – an eternity in flag football standards. With less than two minutes remaining, the Punishers’ Lamar Green pulled off what was easily the most highlight-worthy moment of the game. Charging down the field on a passing play, Green had an A/4 ADA defender stuck to him like glue as the ball was launched from behind the field’s halfway mark. The defender reached up, half attempting to intercept the ball and half attempting to simply knock it away, and instead caused it to spin a few feet in the air and right into the hands of Green, who made a triumphant run into scoring territory and whipped his flag high in the air to celebrate.
Trailing by almost two touchdowns at the start of the second half, the struggling A/4 ADA offensive line should have been focusing on putting points on the board. Instead, they engaged in some half-hearted – and grossly misguided – trash talk from the sidelines. The Punishers were lining up for a play within yards of scoring territory when a laughable taunt rang out from the A/4 ADA side.
“You know where they’re going; they ain’t got nothing else,” said the anonymous affronter. The Punishers’ Randy Wagener responded by taking a pitch from the quarterback on the very next play and running it in for a quick six points.
Wagener later scored again near the end of the game, and despite a last-ditch touchdown from A/4 ADA’s Charles Shinkle, it proved to be more than enough to give the Punishers their seventh straight win of the season.
Following his team’s victory, Green summed up the Punishers’ strategy with one simple phrase: “We’re just going to win until we can’t win anymore.”