A former Poynette athlete has found a way to continue playing the game he loves
- By Kevin Morales ( kmorales@capitalnewspapers.com )
- Capital Newspapers
- Published: 10/25/2007
MADISON — It had been six years since Shaun Hathaway played his last down, but the familiar feelings rushed through him.
It was Saturday, Aug. 24, 2004, and Hathaway, a former Poynette High School linebacker, was playing his first game with a semi-pro football team then known as the Madison Seminoles. The Seminoles were part of the up-start Ironman Football League, which prided itself on providing a way for former high school and college players to continue to play.
“I think a lot of people would probably consider going out there, running around in 90-degree weather for two hours kind of ... ‘oh, this might not be worth it,’” Hathaway said. “I guess you really have to love it.”
Love was never a question.
Hathaway had decided not to try out for the Warhawks football team while attending college at UW-Whitewater, but never shook the hollowness of not suiting up.
That is, until a friend told him about the Seminoles.
He had practiced in pads only a handful of times and the first few plays of that first game remain a blur.
First Hathaway played at defensive end, but found himself under center when the Seminoles’ starting quarterback was injured.
“It was definitely faster than I was expecting,” said Hathaway. “There’s a lot of D-III guys and a few D-I guys. So there’s a lot of good football players out there. And getting back into it, you just really had to get used to the speed of the game.”
It was an unforgettable feeling to play in the present while remembering the football memories of his childhood.
There were highs — he tossed a touchdown pass and a two-point conversion — and there were lows — a defender rolled over his ankle, fracturing a few bones — but Hathaway walked off the field with goose bumps.
Today, he takes the field for the Madison Mustangs — the same franchise Hathaway started with became the Verona Trojans in 2006 and the Madison Mustangs in 2007.
Through the years and the changes, one virtue remained — playing for the love of the game.
Hathaway drove to his first practice in 2004 and found a team of 40 guys, ages 18-40, who worked full-time jobs and raised families but wanted to spend their remaining time, money and energy to play football.
For Hathaway, joining the team meant juggling his job at Epic Systems with lifting weights, making weekly practices and dealing with the aches and pains.
Once game day rolled around every Saturday, players filled up their own tanks and drove to Milwaukee because the team didn’t have a home field.
But Hathaway considered those tolerable nuisances in order to grace the gridiron.
“You put as much into it as you can, but everyone has jobs, families, kids and stuff. So it was nice to still have your normal life and do other things, but put as much as you could into this,” Hathaway said.
Not everything, however, was a dream at first. Besides the travel, the team’s organization wasn’t up to par and players routinely failed to show for practices or games. Plus, no one in the Madison area really embraced the team in the community or the press.
That started to change once Madison-based attorney Bob Gingras took over as coach and owner prior to the team’s move to Verona. He not only aided the team on the field, Gingras helped tender an agreement to use Mansfield Stadium in Madison as the team’s home facility beginning in 2007. The team has started to grab headlines and a sense of community.
“It’s pretty cool because none of that stuff used to happen,” Hathaway said. “Bob’s been trying to get more of that stuff. You hear a commercial on the radio and that’s cool. Also, our home games there’s definitely more fans.”
Hathaway and his team had advanced to the Iron Bowl in 2005 and 2006 and the Mustangs were named the IFL’s 2007 Franchise of the Year.
Still, it isn’t about the publicity or the awards for the players. Instead, it’s about the opportunity to again play their way to one realization, Hathaway said.
“I love football.”