Photo by Meghan White
Written By: Ryan Baker, Journalist
Despite the tough 25-16 loss the Minnesota Wind Chill suffered at the hands of the New York Empire this past Friday, Minnesota broke their home attendance record in their third Super Series game of the year.
The marquee matchup between the two heavyweights was hosted at the Minnesota Vikings’ practice facility, TCO Stadium. A leg up from their normal home stadium in Sea Foam, the Wind Chill hosted their second-ever regular season matchup in the new venue; a venue that could be used more frequently in the future if crowds continue to grow.
“It was a lot of work to pull this one off. I’m so glad people showed out. At some point, if we continue to boost the crowd and get it up, we’re going to have to make a venue change. It’s just inevitable with what we need to do and all of the logistics. This is a good part of the process to get some feedback from our fans. Whether it’s next year or in the next couple years, it’s nice to test out being in a bigger venue to see if we can make it a good experience for the fans, and I’m hopeful we did that,” said head coach Ben Feldman.
The prior record of home attendance, excluding championship weekend last year, was 1165 attendees. This game brought in 1349 people, and has set a new benchmark for the growing team. Playing in that type of atmosphere is something that most enjoy, including Surly’s Player of the Game, Gordon Larson.
“The fans are so much closer here and they wrap around the back. Where they are, you hear them so much more. It's so fun just to be able to look up and high five them if you want to. It's such a big difference. It's just so nice playing here. It's really fun,” said Larson.
When you have twice as many turnovers and only convert three break chances all game against a team that doesn’t give up the disc, it’s not a good formula to win the game. However, Larson was incredible in the spotlight matchup, ending with four goals, five assists, and 554 total yards.
“It's a good opponent. I thought we kept it together pretty good in the first half, despite a few pretty bad miscues. Long points and long field turnovers tired our O-line out, and it got tough to get back on track. New York is a really good team. We got to learn from it. We signed up for this game for a reason,” said Feldman.
It was a tough scene for Minnesota right out of the gate. They were able to keep pace with the Empire for the first few points, but saw themselves down three at the end of the first quarter. The second quarter was much of the same, but the gap closed to two in the final seconds with a Josh Klane huck score to Larson with 1.2 seconds left remaining in the half.
“We knew we had to come in hot. We were locked in. I feel like the fans gave us the energy in the beginning that we needed, that we were lacking last week. It was just fun. My friends are out here. So honestly, playing for them in this atmosphere, it kind of made me dial in from the first point,” said Larson.
The third quarter is where things started to get out of hand. A 6-2 quarter in favor of New York put Minnesota down 12-18 heading into the final frame. From there, Minnesota had to play with some urgency, but that forced some turns that New York capitalized on that expanded the lead even more. The back-to-back losses put Minnesota at 8-3, but that luckily doesn’t affect their playoff standing as they have the Central Division locked up.
“We're in a privileged position. We did the work early where it's not the end of the world that we dropped these two games, but now we know we need to really lock in. Detroit is going to be this last chance to hone our skills, and obviously, there's probably a lot more to hone than we thought there was at first,” said Larson.
The Wind Chill will get one more shot at getting back into the win column before the playoffs with a matchup against the Detroit Mechanix on July 20.
“It's our last chance to work on some things. Also, we want to put on a good show for our fans. We want to build up a little bit of momentum and have a convincing victory next weekend,” said Feldman.
