Ironman League has local history
- By Kevin Morales ( kmorales@capitalnewspapers.com )
- Published: 10/25/2007
The Portage Hitmen won the very first IFL Iron Bowl in 1997.
As Pardeeville native Brent Harris puts it, the Portage Hitmen were a rag-tag, motley football crew.
The Hitmen were one of the pioneers of the Ironman Football League and were composed of mostly Portage and Pardeeville natives. In 1997, in it’s first year of existence, Portage finished the season undefeated and won the very first IFL Iron Bowl before folding one year later.
Portage had less than 20 players, didn’t always feature matching uniforms and were predominantly overlooked in the community. But as the IFL continues to increase in both exposure and numbers, it owes much of its early history and growth to the Hitmen.
The IFL was started by Pewaukee native Chris Chudada in 1996.
“I was looking for how to continue my football career, because I love the game,” said Chudada, who played tackle football every weekend with friends at area parks.
As more friends played in the weekly gatherings, more wanted to play. Chudada and his father, Joseph, began researching semi-pro football leagues around the country and developed the IFL in 1996.
The league’s humble beginnings included just two teams — a blue and a white team. Soon those players — many of whom lived in other regions of southern Wisconsin — wanted to start teams in their respective communities.
One of those players was Chudada’s friend and former Portage resident Jon Finzel. Finzel explained that he could field a team in Portage and in 1997 the Portage Hitmen were born.
“It was a struggle,” said Harris of the Hitmen’s inaugural season, when the IFL played nine-man football. “There were weekends where we were literally going down there with 12 guys or 11 guys, having to play both ways the entire game.”
Harris said the team occasionally picked up new players as the season progressed just to fill out the roster.
Those new players didn’t always have the same uniforms or equipment. But all that mattered was the result on the field and enjoyment of playing the game.
“It was the fact that you’ve got the camaraderie,” said Harris of the rewards of playing on the team. “You got together every Saturday to drive down there in a couple vans, you get to converse, you get to know the guys. You develop a lot of good bonds and friendships.”
Granted, it’s easy to build a team bond when the team is winning, and the Hitmen did plenty of that. In the first year the IFL expanded from two teams to six, Portage pounded its slate and finished the season a perfect 11-0.
They were the first — and still one of only five teams — to play an entire season without a loss. For Harris and the Hitmen, it was a perfect introduction to the league and a perfect way to stay involved in the game.
“In high school, you don’t understand that you only get to do this for so long,” Harris said. “Then all of a sudden as you get a little older, you’re thinking ’gosh, I wish I could’ve went back and taken advantage of the time and the games that I had.’ Well we got to do that. So that was kind of the big reward.”
Harris tried to get a team started in Pardeeville, naming his potential franchise the Pardeeville Seminoles, but low numbers forced the Pardeeville players to play with Portage in 1998. Portage went 5-3 and missed the playoffs that year before the franchise folded.
“Guys just went different directions,” Harris said. “A lot of the guys that were playing when it was the Hitmen in Portage, were in their early 30s and I think they realized, we kind of realized that this league is starting to become legitimate and fill up with college players and semi-pro players and I think they kind of had a couple years of fun and said ’that’s enough.’”
Harris, however, stayed involved and in 1999 started the Madison Seminoles. He led the Seminoles to the Iron Bowl V title and in 2005 was the first QB inducted into the IFL Hall of Fame.
Eleven years after it’s simple start, the IFL today features 14 teams from Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Chudada said the biggest challenge was cleaning the reputation of semi-pro football leagues. Chudada emphasized professionalism on the business end and on the field and pushed teams to feature high quality players.
“Now it’s just working better than I thought,” said Chudada, who added 90 percent of the IFL players now are former college athletes. “These guys are not weekend warriors. These guys are athletes.”
The IFL has followed a national trend among semi-pro leagues. The first leagues can be traced back to the east coast in the early 1900s. But leagues such as the IFL have exploded over the last 20 years and there are now an estimated 600 such leagues across the country.
“It’s the real deal,“ said Harris of the IFL. “The league went from kind of a hodge-podge thing to now, now it’s one of the best. It’s pretty cool.”
Harris said the IFL and the Madison franchise that is now the Madison Mustangs owe much of what they’ve become to that rag-tag group from Portage and Pardeeville. The again, he said, the players owe just as much to the IFL for the opportunity.
“I’m 32-years old right now and I’m kind of in the state of the game where I just play flag football leagues,“ Harris said. “But I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot of days when I get the itch to where I’d just like to get back in shape one more time and give it a shot.”