John Blanchette: Madarieta’s goals include different arena

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – And now, for what is either the subtext or the summing up of arena football, Spokane style, we turn it over to the Shock’s Levi Madarieta:

“This isn’t where anybody wants to be,” he said. “But it’s great that we’re here.”

No, he wasn’t channeling Yogi. He was making perfect sense, and on multiple levels, too. That’s as rare in sports as a Kokanee left unopened at a Shock tailgate party.

For instance, Madarieta could have been talking about the ArenaCup, which stars the Shock and the Green Bay Blizzard here Saturday night at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico. No one really understands why the championship game of arenafootball2 has been exported to the Caribbean, especially anyone here. It’s unlikely the players embraced the idea of logging 3,500 air miles to earn their last 200 bucks. And obviously anyone with a financial stake – the league, the owners and any of the fans rabidos confronted with price of last-minute airfare – would rather have seen the game played in Spokane and the fail-safe sellout.

Still, better here than, oh, Haiti.

But Madarieta’s reference was more big-picture. The af2, he explained, is no player’s idea of a destination. But as duty goes, better to do it in Spokane, where the game and the team became an instant cult.

“It’s been a great experience in Spokane,” he agreed.

And if you’re going to play, why not win it all?

“A championship at any level is a huge deal,” he said. “Everybody wants a ring.”

And then, well, they want out – most of them, anyway.

“It’s not something people talk about all the time – it’s just pretty much known,” said Madarieta, a combo fullback-linebacker and one of the Shock’s handful of full-season mainstays. “You know everyone’s thinking, ‘I hope this is my last year in this league.’

“That’s what this league is for. It’s set up for guys to gain experience to move up. I think they say that 40 percent of all Arena Football League players come from af2. You’ll get guys released from NFL clubs and they try to go to the Arena league and they can’t do it, because it’s a completely different game – the rules, the positions. It takes time to transition to the Arena game from regular outdoor football.”

Madarieta should know – he started the transition in an even lower league.

He was a smallish linebacker at Brigham Young University – after spending a freshman year at Washington – who was signed and then cut by the New York Giants in 2004. After another year at BYU as a graduate-assistant strength coach, he got a call from a coach in the National Indoor Football League – inside football minus the Arena brand and some of the furniture.

So off Madarieta went to Billings, Mont.

“I was only there about a month – I didn’t like Billings that much,” he said. “I asked for a trade to Tri-Cities because I knew the guy who was the personnel director a little bit.”

Good choice. The Fever wound up winning the NIFL title.

Madarieta thought he’d parlay that into a job with the Utah Blaze of the AFL, but he’d been playing as a safety at 220 pounds. The Blaze were looking for something in the fullback/linebacker size.

“They told me I wasn’t big enough – that defensively I was great, but they needed a bigger fullback,” he said. “It’s like a glorified offensive lineman, basically. You spend 95 percent of the time blocking and a lot of the Mac linebackers in the AFL are 265, 280 pounds and they want somebody who’s going to be able to handle that.”

So the transition began anew. Madarieta bulked himself up to 250 pounds and started learning the two-way trade with the Shock. Now it’s more like three-way – coach Chris Siegfried has used Madarieta as a rush end on the line. He made himself so immediately invaluable that a preseason trade with Memphis for former Eastern Washington quarterback Josh Blankenship blew up when one of the players the Xplorers wanted was Madarieta.

“I told them to forget about it,” Siegfried said. “His value is that he is so versatile on offense and defense. With him and Neil (Purvis) on the other edge, we get a lot of pressure on quarterbacks and we’re forcing teams to throw before they want to.”

For Madarieta, it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

“If I want to move up (to the AFL), that’s not really my position,” he said. “But it does allow me to show I can get a rush on the edge, and the guy that does more than the other guy is obviously more valuable. The more I can do, the better.”

He’s talking about doing it somewhere else, of course. That’s where he really wants to be.

But for both him and the Shock, it’s great that he’s here.