Rebels sift through their fans | Free press

There will be no classic league game for the Vogtland Rebels this season. The league has been canceled for American footballers. It’s a bit sobering for the Rebels, who couldn’t play last season due to the pandemic. According to Thomas Schulze, head coach of the Vogtland Rebels, they just want to keep training and prepare for 2022: “And whatever else may come this year, we’ll just take with us.”

The syndicate of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia is trying to create a kind of emergency league. This is planned for September / October. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens after the summer holidays. We hope that we can play, but we can’t say today whether that will be possible,” explains Schulze: “If nothing goes, we’ll try to organize friendly matches, but there too you have to see what hygiene requirements there are and whether the effort is worthwhile for the club. “

Fortunately, there were no departures from the Rebels due to the Corona crisis. “But we have some members who are sick and still suffer from it, and there are also some active people whose professional situation has changed due to Corona and who are now breaking away,” said Schulze.

On Saturday there was a tryout on the adjacent square of the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn Stadium in Treuen, i.e. an open training session in which interested children, young people and adults had the opportunity to get a taste of the sport and get an insight into club life. A total of 15 interested people were counted. Tim Peterfi has joined the trial training: “My brother plays for the Vogtland Rebels and I’ve also been interested in American football for a long time and can well imagine playing myself.”

As Franziska Scheel, head coach of the Flag Jugend explains, there are currently twelve boys and girls in the offspring: “Three have only just been added and we had two interested parties at the tryout. At the age of eight you can slowly start taking the offspring to the Introduce sport. ” Children aged ten and over are eligible to play in the league. The boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 15 play the low-contact variant of American football, are taught the basics of the sport in a playful way and the team spirit is strengthened. “It’s a good start, and if the children still have fun playing football later on, they continue with their youth. That’s the classic structure,” says Scheel.

For the girls, however, it’s over after the flags. “Boys and girls can train together up to the age of 14, but later the difference is simply too big, if only from a physical point of view”, Thomas Schulze knows from experience. You’d need a women’s team. But first of all, enough girls and women would have to be found for this.

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