CINCINNATI’S BEST SEMI-PRO PLAYERS STOCK LOCAL INDOOR TEAMS
Commandos, Silverbacks Draw From Area’s Semi-Pro Talent

    Saturday night, the Miami Valley Silverbacks will play the Cincinnati Commandos at the Cincinnati Gardens in Week 6 of the Continental Indoor Football League.  In many ways, however, far more teams will be on the field, as both sides are stocked with the best players from Cincinnati’s many semi-pro football teams.
    “It definitely makes me play hard,” said Silverbacks receiver Dale Golsby, who also is a leading receiver with the Kentucky-Ohio Xtreme.  “I want to represent our team (the Xtreme) to the best of my abilities.  If I can’t represent my team to the best of my abilities, who else can?”
    Golsby, a three-year veteran of the Xtreme, has appeared in games with past and present semi-pro teammates like Rich Bailey, James Jackson, Chris Davis, Ray Huff, and Rodney Stone this season. 
    Almost to a man, all the semi-pro players who have made the step into the professional ranks agree that the biggest adjustment is the speed of the indoor game.
“The games are a lot faster and it’s a lot more closed in with the walls,” said Dominick Goodman, a Commandos receiver who was the Mid-Continental Football League’s co-MVP while leading the Kings Comets to their league’s title.
The Comets have seven players who played for them last season on the Commandos.  Terrill Byrd, James Frazier, Andy Stuckert, Brandon Boehm, Jermaine Woods, and Commandos GM and kicker Travis Johnson are the others.  Kings also has five players who have appeared in games for the Silverbacks, Austin Goss, TiRon Jones, Eric Starks, Rob Feliciano, and Brandon Martin, who played for both the Xtreme and Comets last season.
“It’s fun, because you get to talk about going against each other in semi-pro,” said Jones, a defensive back.  “Half our team is on the Silverbacks and the Commandos.  It strengthens semi-pro in Cincinnati.  Everyone knows what people are capable of.”
Coaches of both teams also have strong ties to the semi-pro football as well, with Silverbacks head coach Brian Wells holding the same role with the Comets while Commandos head coach Billy Back played under Wells with the Comets this past season.
“It has been tough with so many players from different teams, to get them together.  And competing for a few positions makes it worse,” said Wells.  “We’re starting to realize we all want to win.  That’s our common goal, our common bond.”
That challenge of bringing together players from so many different teams has been greater for the Silverbacks, who enter Saturday’s games with a 1-3 record.  While the Commandos, who are 4-0, have just one player who played for a semi-pro team other than the Comets last season on their roster, Darrell Brown of the Kentucky Stallions, Miami Valley’s roster features players from a variety of semi-pro teams.
Quarterback Kyenes Mincy and lineman Derrick Crawford played for the Mount Carmel Fire, Darryl Spencer was on the Tri-State Sharks’ roster last season, and Mike Brown has played for the Ohio Valley Warriors on the outdoor field and the Silverbacks in indoor, in addition to the Comets and Xtreme players.
Will White and Chris Stanford of the Silverbacks and James Spikes of the Commandoes also have experience with local semi-pro teams.
“It’s been different personalities,” said Mincy, who helped the Silverbacks end a 17-game losing streak in Chicago last week with five touchdown passes.  “It’s like different recipes.  You just mix it up until everybody likes it, until the ingredients are right.”
All the players, regardless of indoor or semi-pro team, agree playing semi-pro football has helped them get to the professional level. 
“I think semi-pro got me ready for different things, so I could step it up and play indoor,” Feliciano of the Comets and Silverbacks said.  “It prepared me.”
    Some, like Austin Goss, also plan on using their indoor experience to help them on the outdoor field.
“Indoor is going to prepare me better for semi-pro, so when we all get back together, we’re going to be better football players,” Goss said.
When the indoor season is over and the semi-pro players all return to their respective teams, Mincy says fans of the indoor game may be surprised at what they find if they come to check out a semi-pro game.
“It’s not weak like people think it is,” Mincy said.  “The true fact is most of the city’s local talent is in semi-pro.”