Shock achieved every goal except one

All right, so they admit they fell short. But give the Spokane Shock credit – for a few different reasons.

For completing the arenafootball2 season with 18 wins and two losses, for winning their third straight Western Division and second National Conference title in three seasons and for having the class to tip their hats to a team that was better on the night it mattered most.

“Records don’t matter – the team that won has six losses,” Shock head coach Adam Shackleford said Monday night following Spokane’s 56-55 overtime loss to the Tennessee Valley Vipers (14-6) in the ArenaCup championship game.

“Winning a championship is all that matters,” Shackleford said. “Teaching the young men the game of arena football so that hopefully they can go out next year and move up (to the AFL) and make more money was our second goal.

“Our first goal was to win football games.”

Which they did – 18 times to be exact – and along the way the Shock became the closest group the franchise has fielded. Throughout the season, frequent triumph – and tragedy, when veteran receiver Raul Vijil’s 10-month-old niece Francis Rose Vijil Murguia died unexpectedly – brought the group of players together on and off the field.

“It hurts like hell right now,” Shackleford said Monday. “But we’ve got to take our hats off to Tennessee Valley in a hard-fought game – and we know that it’s not the end of the world, it’s just the end of this game.”

Although it’s also the end of Spokane’s third season, it’s not the last the Shock will see of Shackleford, who has one year left on his contract and has said he intends to fulfill that before potentially moving up to coach in the AFL.

Shackleford said losing the championship game only makes him more motivated to recruit harder in the off-season and return with the same set of goals next season.

“We’ve got to work harder next year in the off-season to put together a team that’s going to come back and fight for this again,” Shackleford said. “Our guys played their butts off (Monday). They have nothing to be ashamed about. We lost by one point in overtime. It stinks to lose, but you’re not going to win them all.”

Two Shock players have expressed they may not return for another season – Vijil and fellow three-year veteran Rico Ochoa, an offensive lineman.

Ochoa, who played college ball in Nebraska, has said he will definitely not play another season because he wants to focus more on being a father to his two children who live on the other side of the country.

Vijil is hoping to explore options in the AFL and move up if presented with the opportunity.

“I couldn’t ask for anything more from the guys I played with this season,” Vijil said after the game. “We played with a lot of heart, we fought to the end. It’s been a great season, and it wasn’t the way we wanted to end it, but Spokane stuck by us and I just want to thank them for all the support they’ve given us for the last three years.

“Hopefully, I’ll try and get out of here and move up to the next level. That’s what I’m looking at right now.

“I’m going to take a break – a well-deserved break, I think – and enjoy that for a while and then get back to work, and hopefully some coach sees something in me and will take a chance on me.”

Vijil said that despite the painful loss, he considers the time he spent playing in Spokane a privilege – even though the sting of losing the big game may never go away.

“I don’t know if we’re going to get over it ever,” Vijil said. “You play for championships. It’s going to hurt for a while. All we can do is learn from it. It was a great season, but I think this is going to stick in our minds for a long time.”

That thought was echoed by many of the players on Monday night. It would be hard not to feel that way after bringing the title game to Spokane but stopping shy of winning the title trophy.

“We had a great season,” Shackleford said. “But we fell short.”