Snakebitten

The setting couldn’t have been more perfect.

The Spokane crowd – an Arena packed with people decked out in orange and blue – backed by a Monday Night Football feel. The home team – the Spokane Shock – heavily favored to win the big game because, after all, they were the best team in the arenafootball2 league when the game began.

It was kind of lead up that couldn’t have been scripted any better. The part that nobody factored in was the possibility of being let down.

But then it happened – Alonzo Nix caught Tennessee Valley backup quarterback Tony Colston’s 24-yard touchdown pass in overtime and Colston scrambled into the end zone for the two-point conversion. The Shock had been snakebitten and the Vipers had stolen the ArenaCup with a 56-55 overtime championship victory in front of 10,662 fans.

“Disappointment,” was the one word Shock veteran receiver Raul Vijil could muster.

“When you’re in the championship game you definitely want to come out on top,” he added. “You look at it, and we’re the second best team in the af2, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like we just lost the championship. It hurts.”

There were mistakes and circumstances along the way that hurt the Shock (18-2).

There were Brian Jackson’s uncommon missed kicks and then there were the ones that were blocked, too.

There was the handful of penalties throughout the game that resulted in too many lost yards for the Shock.

There was also Desmond Foster’s interception in the end zone to stop a Shock touchdown drive.

An up-and-down performance from the Shock’s typically steady quarterback Nick Davila didn’t help – as incomplete passes marred the Shock’s determination to get up the field and into the end zone – and neither did the noticeable and rare mistakes from the Shock’s secondary defense.

It certainly didn’t feel like the perfect happy ending everybody pictured. The Shock had apparently considered the alternate ending, though.

“We knew they were good enough to beat us if they played well,” Shock coach Adam Shackleford said. “We didn’t protect very well. We’ve got to make plays. We made too many mistakes and you’re not going to beat a good team when that happens. We lost this football game because we made more mistakes then they did.

“We had a great season, but we fell short. We were good enough to win this football game. We have to tip our hats to Tennessee Valley – they played well enough to win.”

The Vipers (14-6) were paced by Nix and Gary Elliott, who each caught four touchdown passes. After the Vipers starting quarterback – Kevin Eakin – was helped off the field on Tennessee Valley’s first drive, Colston went in and completed 20 of 30 passes for 288 yards for seven touchdowns and rushed for two more.

In overtime, Spokane’s Kelvin Dickens caught his fourth touchdown of the night and Jackson made the point-after kick to put the Shock ahead 55-48.

The successful two-point scramble from Colston would seal Spokane’s fate and send the Vipers bench into an uproar.

“They’re a great team,” said Elliott, who was one of four players in the game to catch four touchdown passes. “We knew we had to just get down to it and play our game. We were underestimated the whole time we were here – when we were at the (af2 Awards Banquet on Sunday night) everybody was hollering for them. They were showing highlights of us getting beat, this town didn’t think we could win – no way.

“They disrespected us from the jump – so I just loved it baby.”

But after an almost unblemished season coming into the game, it didn’t seem right that the Shock weren’t the ones celebrating a championship win on the field after the game.

And they knew it.

“The Spokane fans, they were great to us and we wanted to give that back to them,” Vijil said. “This one will hurt for a long time. I’m not sure it’s something we will ever get over.”