Shock, Vijil raise stakes at new level

Raul Vijil’s jersey can’t be retired until he is, although any of two or three junctures in the second half Saturday night would have been an appropriate time to hoist it up at the Spokane Arena.

The rafters were about the only place he didn’t venture to catch a touchdown pass.

This development was neither a particular surprise or an inevitability, but rather a reaffirmation of how old-shoe comfortable we’ve become with the jitterbug receiver whose seven TDs carried the Spokane Shock to a 67-57 victory over the Jacksonville Sharks, the top-ranked team with the big-name quarterback – by Arena Football League standards, at least.

By the middle of next week, that distinction will almost certainly fall to the Shock. Well, everything except the big-name business.

Business that seems to have burrowed under coach Rob Keefe’s skin a bit.

“It’s about time to shut a lot of people up in a lot of ways,” said the first-year head coach.

“For everybody who thought that the little city that couldn’t, or players who were written off by these other teams and the youngest of all these coaches who supposedly didn’t know what they were doing – it’s about time people started recognizing who we are, all over this league.”

That’s certainly a mouthful here at the end of May, but it’s hard to argue with what the Shock have achieved midway through this first AFL season.

After a somewhat sketchy debut against Milwaukee in April, the Shock have won six of seven – the loss on a kickoff return in the last 10 seconds. If they’re not as dominant as they were back in the old af2 days – and no one is suggesting they would or should be – they’ve certainly made up for it with resilience, as they did playing cat-and-mouse with Jacksonville most of this night.

In this case, the mouse that could never be caught was Vijil, who has heard the acclaim from the 10,000-plus Arena regulars often enough before – but cranked it up past 10 on the dial against the Sharks.

It was pretty obvious early that the 5-foot-10 skeeter was going to be quarterback Kyle Rowley’s primary target – he went to Vijil on the first two plays from scrimmage. Unfortunately, the second ended in a fumble when Vijil was stripped by the Sharks’ Dee Webb. That allowed 39-year-old Jacksonville quarterback Aaron Garcia – an AFL legend long before the league was shuttered and reconstructed – to stake the Sharks to a quick 14-0 lead.

Vijil has had to play his way through turnovers before – and understands the best thing to do after letting it go is, well, to let it go.

“It happened early enough in the game that it was a little easier to overcome,” he said. “You never want to turn one over, especially in arena football at this level because even one can cost you the game. But I got a lot of support from the team and (offensive coordinator Matt) Sauk put me right back in motion.”

Did he ever. Vijil put some space between himself and J-ville’s Jason Perry on a corner route for Spokane’s first touchdown, and the chase was on. He was the motion receiver on all seven of his touchdown receptions – out of 11 for the game – and never had to reuse a trick.

“I think every single TD might have been a different route,” he said.

In a game where player turnover is the only constant, Vijil is now in his fifth year with the Shock – after four at Eastern Washington. That sort of sustained profile in Spokane sports may well be unprecedented in the modern era – and Vijil weighed not sticking around for the city’s introduction to this step up in indoor football.

“I’d been trying to make the AFL and it finally came back, but not in the same sense as before,” he said. “But I wanted to play at the highest level possible. It’s not the greatest pay – $400 a game – but I’ve got a good job here in Spokane and I thought, ‘Why not come out one more year, go for it all and see what you’ve got?’ ”

He has plenty. Apparently, so do the Shock.

“Everybody was kind of complaining at the beginning of the year, ‘Aw, what happened to our team?’ ” Keefe said. “We kept the guys we felt were AFL players, and that’s not a knock on anybody. But this is a different game. The last route (Vijil) hit was on a guy that was drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“We have very good players and I want higher levels of football – with higher rates of pay – to recognize this because these guys deserve a shot at making some money.”

Saturday was one of those nights when 400 bucks felt like a million.