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| OV's Rayshawn Askew signs an autograph for a faithful fan. |
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 December 27, 2004 - Coaches Corner
by Robert Fuller
2005 Open Player Tryout
The Try-outs for the upcoming 2005 season went
very well. We had a great mix between a solid
core of veteran returnees and some great young
talent right out of college.
On Saturday the athletes were tested by the
Xplosive Edge and then put through an actual
practice structure that included an Individual,
group, and team periods. This helped the
coaching staff evaluate their physical ability along
with their capacity to learn and digest
information quickly.
Veterans Donavon Laviness, Steve Lovell, Dontae
Jones, Damien Bauman, Richard Johnson, and
Cale Good all had a solid work-outs. Two rookies
that impressed the coaching staff were WR Mike
Nizzi (UNO) and CB Johnson Lawson (Midland
Lutheran). Select players will be invited back to a
"Invite only" try-out at the end of January.
All players with college or professional experience
that would like to be considered for the 2005
Omaha Beef Football team please mail a football
resume and game film to Robert Fuller, Omaha
Beef Football, 1907 Harney Street, Omaha,
Nebraska 68102. Biographies may be emailed to
[email protected].
Behind The Beef
The Dedicated People Who Help Make the Beef
the Best Team in Indoor Football
Sean Weide Statistician
by Jeremy Poore, Staff Writer
The day Sean Weide heard there was a
professional football team coming to Omaha he
knew he had to be a part of it. Sean sat down
with the late Jim Klimschot, a former statistician
himself, who told him that the statistics were as
important as any other part of the team. And
from that point on Sean has been the stats guy
for the Omaha Beef.
Sean credits his father, Keith, for getting him
interested in stats back in the 1970s at
Creighton basketball games. He got his start in
sports statistics in Kearney, NE. Sean used to
freelance sports stories for the Grand Island
Independent while attending college at Kearney
State. He has done stats on all levels including
the Kansas City Chiefs, Nebraska Cornhuskers,
various high schools, and even his younger
brothers junior high team. Sean was also part of
the stats crew for the Omaha Racers professional
basketball team. Seans younger brother, Neil,
also helped with stats for the Racers. This may
not seem odd at all to most, but Neil still remains
the youngest statistician in the history of
professional basketball, doing stats at age 12.
Neil and Sean still are a team, doing stats for the
Omaha Beef, along with Dave Mohr. All of these
gentlemen have been doing stats for the Beef
since day one. Sean still remembers that first
game, The Beefs first-ever game was unusual,
particularly for indoor football, in that very few
points (if any) were scored in the second half of
that game. I recall the pace being very frenetic in
the opening minutes as we adjusted to watching
the game from near the rafters of the Civic
Auditorium.
Murphys Law also plays havoc on the stats
team week after week. Rarely a game goes by
when something doesnt go wrong. It could be
the printer running out of toner, or a power glitch
that puts the computer in the dark just as one
team is running a hurry-up offense to get a quick
score. In a situation like that, we go back to
doing stats the old-fashioned way by hand.
There are also games where the crowd is so loud,
the stats crew is yelling at each other, even
though were sitting inches apart. Those are
always exciting times. Sean lamented.
When I asked Sean what it took to be an indoor
football statistician he replied, As statisticians it
is imperative to be accurate. And the quickness
of the indoor game sometimes makes this
challenging. Theres nothing like charting a pass
that a receiver catches, then fumbles away to the
opposition, who runs it back for a touchdown.
Who threw the pass, who caught it, where did
they fumble, who forced the fumble, who picked
up the fumble, where did they pick up the
fumble, how far did they return it, who made the
tackle (or the touchdown in this case) those are
all questions we have to provide answers for in
that situation.
The more Sean told me about being a statistician
the harder it sounded. I figured he has at least
seen some very exciting plays
so I asked him
about the most exciting play hes ever seen. Id
like to say Ive seen a lot of exciting plays in my
days as a Beef statistician. But the reality is,
once a long play starts to develop, Im already
looking down at the computer screen to begin
inputting it. So if Steve Lovell runs back a kickoff
48 yards, I might see the first 10 or 15 yards of
it, before I start inputting how far the kickoff
went, who caught it, where they started running,
etc.
Outside of football and stats Sean is an account
executive at the advertising agency of Ervin &
Smith. He is married to his beautiful wife
Danielle and together they have four young
daughters, Emily age 7, Lauren age 5, Julia age
4, and Olivia age 2. |
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