Gladiators Get Their Man in Haege
Marc Viquez
Tuesday September 4, 2001
Haege is on the heals of winning back-to-back Arena Cup championships with the Quad City Steamwheelers. During the team’s inaugural season in 2000 they became the first professional football team to go undefeated since the NFL’s Miami Dolphins in 1972. Their 19-0 record were also the most victories in a season and in 2001 Quad City went 18-1. It is amazing, but Haege’s teams have lost fewer than the Gladiators have won!
“As I`ve always said, it`s players that make this game, and I want to thank all of my players in [Quad City] because they are the real reason I`m getting this opportunity [to coach the New Jersey Gladiators],” added Haege. This season he will have an array of new talent and rising stars on a nicely nit Gladiators franchise. OS Coco Blalock, QB Connell Maynor, DS Dwayne Sabb, and George Del Ricco will be just a few of the faces.
“We need to evaluate their players and then we need to find a lot of free agents. “We`re obviously going to look very seriously at af2 top players,” said Haege. He should have some players on his mind that he may like to move up to north to New Jersey – an incentive that comes with a former af2 coach.
New Jersey is not new territory for the 34-year-old head coach who enters his eight season in the AFL. He served as defensive coordinator for the New Jersey Red Dogs in 1997 and 1998 and was assistant head coach for the team in 1999. Haege also served as defensive coordinator with the defunct Minnesota Fighting Pike in 1996 and as special teams coordinator with Milwaukee in 1994.
The major obstacle will be whether or not his magic down in Quad City will transfer to a New Jersey team that ranked last in defense and did not start showing signs of scoring until week 10 against Florida. The Meadowlands is another obstacle, as fans were few and far between and will not arrive in large droves like in the Quad Cities.
“Obviously the level of competition and the stakes are higher [in the AFL],” said Haege. The stakes will be a lot higher for a franchise that is playing in the nation’s number one sports market, although that honor also saturates the media coverage of selected sports during the summer months.
Mara said that this off-season would be a busy one and that he and his organization have a lot of room from now and before the start of the season. Something the franchise did not have last year. It looks like the first order of business has been successfully achieved with the hiring of Haege, who has no illusions on what he expects from his team in 2002.
“Our goal at the New Jersey Gladiators is to make the playoffs next year. I think that is a realistic but challenging goal”
A fan of the sport since 1990 Marc has covered both the New Jersey Gladiators and Cincinnati Swarm (Af2) for Arenafan Online. Marc now resides in Indianapolis after graduating with a Masters in Sports Management from Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind. When not at a Firebirds game Marc can be found traveling the Midwest covering sports for various Internet and print publications.
