Part 2 of Building the Helvetic Guards

Part 2 of building a team

Norm did a great job finding a few A-tags right away.  He had some contacts with a group he worked with and we suddenly had a Division I quarterback on our team and a legitimate defensive pass rusher.

Collin Hill played in three of four years (starting when he was healthy) at Colorado State and then played as a grad transfer at University of South Carolina – starting eight games.  An accurate and gifted QB.  Truly a steal for our expansion franchise.

JR Tavaii would become a lynchpin for our defense.  JR was an on and off starter at USC.  He  would certainly  be a top player for us and the Helvetic Guards.  Plus, he is a fantastic guy.

We had our eye on a quick and fast WR early on.  But, he had other plans and we had to move on.  Later we would find an excellent athlete in Silas Nacita – an experienced and well known player in Europe.  But more about that later.

We really hit gold when we found a corner.  Kenny Hike Jr. was a GFL all-star for Dresden, played in the Spring League for Jerry Glanville.  Kenny was everything we heard about him.  A gifted cover corner … a leader and most importantly a fantastic person.

Every one of those guys turned out to be excellent additions for a first-year team.  Very good players but their leadership and guidance meant so much for our young and inexperienced team.

I would say that we hit on each one of these players as far as finding first rate players for our team.  It would turn out that we weren’t as good with the six E-tag players we went after.

First, we found two offensive linemen in Gabriel Rodriguez and Amos Laoye.  Gabe from Spain, Amos from Belgium… well not so fast… turns out Amos cannot be considered an E-Tag.  Unfortunately, we didn’t find out this until too late.  We never replaced him.  Playing without an E-tag was probably a mistake.

We then picked up Igor Mašlanka a TE from Slovakia and Swedish wide receiver Anton Jallai.  Norm really thought Mašlanka would be a great fit for his vision of our offense. I saw Anton running past guys in his league – looked straight line fast.

Unfortunately for us Igor just never developed into a flexible enough player for us and Anton got a case of the “yips.”  He had a hard time catching the ball … we tried to get them going – just couldn’t get it done.

I really think both will have good futures – but we had to move on and we eventually released them both.  (That turned out to be another problem for us … releasing players … more on that later).

Defensively, we picked up two versatile defensive backs Chaska Perron and Maceo Beard who were both French.  They both lived up to our expectations.

Mace would go on to be the most valuable defensive player in the European Football League.  Chaska was equally important to our defense.  Both were also instrumental in helping us sign two wide receivers towards the end of the season.

Next we needed to find our Swiss players!