That sentence, in case you didn’t know, is two things: one, the taunting, overconfident question posed by the DC Divas both on their website and in the program for last week’s game against the Militia, and two, my own personal catchphrase of the past ten days. The Divas used it to crow some more about what is admittedly one of the darkest moments in Militia history…actually, let’s let the Divas tell it themselves. This is taken verbatim from the printed program for last week’s game:
The Divas home game against the Boston Militia today will be a rematch of the barn-storming game the teams played last year for the Eastern Conference Championship. In that game the lead had already changed once when Militia quarterback, Allison Cahill, retook the lead for her team with a 38-yard run for a touchdown with just under a minute left to play in the game. On the ensuing kickoff, #85 Tara Stephenson caught the ball on the Divas’ fifteen and ran back 85 yards for a touchdown to win the game for the Divas. It was Stephenson’s second kickoff return for a touchdown in 2009. Stephenson will be returning kickoffs for the Divas today, but will Boston dare to kick off to her?
Now, I do get that it’s not a literal query…I mean, I don’t think anyone in the Divas franchise was really sitting around hoping that the Militia would get off the bus and get dressed and take the field and then someone would yell HOLY SHIT IT’S TARA STEPHENSON and then they’d all clamor back on the bus, shaking with fear. (Although come to think of it, that would have been hilarious to stage. Too bad I didn’t suggest that a week ago.)
But it’s still obnoxious, and since coincidentally I too am obnoxious, it seemed only right to adopt it as my own (albeit sarcastic) rallying cry. BUT WILL THEY DARE KICK OFF TO TARA STEPHENSON? I asked the Backseat Coach after we decided to travel down to DC for the game. Will they DARE? I asked the cats and my coworkers and some very confused pedestrians that happened to be passing by my car when I was stuck in traffic by the BU Bridge. WILL THEY DARE?
Why yes, yes they did in fact dare. And it turned out quite nicely for them, as you can read here in this article. It was a great game, honestly, and the Backseat Coach and I have much more to say about it (like hey, why don’t WE have a hilariously creepy mascot who inexplicably wears an Iron Man Mexican wrestling mask?) but I’m afraid this post would just turn into something far too long for people to actually want to read, and besides, I need to get to this part:
Why the eff can’t I find anyone covering the Militia/Nemesis game that starts in half an hour? I am seriously bothered by this. Per this post, there’s multiple broadcasts for the NY Sharks game and one for each of four other games but not ours. Neither we nor the Nemesis’ crew seem to be on top of the Twitter thing [see update below] which means I can only hope that somehow the main IWFL feed can give us the score once in a while. It’s hard to cheerlead when you don’t know what’s happening in the game. (Not impossible, mind you, but hard. All I have right now is “BUT WILL THEY DARE KICK OFF TO SOME WIDE RECEIVER WHOSE NAME I DON’T KNOW?” but I’m working on it.) Go, Militia!
UPDATE: I take it back! Someone’s updating the Militia Twitter feed for serious. Thanks, Militia Twitterer!!
