Chasing Podiums

The past two events for us were complete failures. This was the worst start of a season in all of Tampa Bay Damages professional history, going 2-2 in the NXL Las Vegas Open and 1-3 in the NXL Dallas Open. We knew that if we wanted to fix this, then we needed to make some changes moving forward.

As we started to prepare ourselves for the NXL Philadelphia event we had to take into consideration that one of our most aggressive and dynamic players Chad Busiere #7, would not be able to make the event. Chad will be in Poland getting married to his soon to be wife Magda. We knew we had a choice to make, go to the event with 6 players or look to pick someone up and beef up the roster to 7 for this event and then 8 players moving forward. 

We knew that is what a clear issue for me to play and coach, so we brought in Patrick Mckenna a couple of years ago. Patrick was unable to control the players alpha personalities and the team was not confident in his play calling. This resulted in a lack of respect that any coach needs to confidently make decisions. After the Texas Open Patrick and Damage decided to part ways. Lucky for us we started talking to Joey Blute earlier this year about coming back to the Damage organization to coach us, and after his recent departure from Mutiny, we were able to seal a deal. With Joey on board now he was able to also recruit Bryan “Agent” Smith to return to Damage for NXL Philadelphia Open and the remainder of the season.

We plan on going into the first layout weekend focusing on rebuilding the team's strengths and identifying our weaknesses and then correcting those through drills. Our first practice is going to consist of doing a lot of basic skill drills, scenario-based drills, and down body points against our Semi-Professional farm team the TBD Jits.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to fight our way back to the top of the podium!