(S25) - PT 4 - Spooky Scary Season

[Memento Mori]

The Philadelphia Liberty locker room is a particularly spooky place at Halloween because, if you were unaware, the Liberty are the victims of various curses. Some of these curses are well-known, others less so. The longest-running and perhaps most well-known curse afflicting the Liberty is a sort of general curse, that has existed for many, many seasons. For that story, we have to go all the way back to Season 6. It was the Ultimus, where the 9-5 Liberty were taking on an 11-3 Orange County Otters team quarterbacked by the legendary Mike Boss. The score was 23-17 in favour of Orange County, but the Liberty had the ball on 1st and 10 at their own 28 yard line with 4:56 left in the fourth quarter. Nine plays and 71 yards later, the ball was at the Orange County 1 yard line. 1:27 left to play. 4th and goal from the 1. Tyler Oles dropped back to pass, and threw the ball in the direction of future Hall of Fame wide receiver Josh Garden. The play-by-play reads the immortal line, once enshrined in many signatures around the ISFL: "Pass by Oles, T. to Garden, J. was dropped! Incomplete. Turnover on downs." The Otters got the ball back on the 1 yard line, ran for a first down and the game was over. Bad luck has seemed to follow the team ever since, often considered one of the unluckiest franchises in the league, leading to speculation that Philly was cursed.

A second famous curse is the succinctly named "kicker curse". Every kicker in recent history for the Liberty has been taken from the team in one way or another. The first was Baxter Frost, who retired after winning a Punter of the Year award. A few short seasons later, his replacement Venus Powers was selected by the Honolulu Hahalua in the S21/S22 expansion draft. Powers was replaced by Lefty Louis, who went inactive shortly after. Louis was replaced by Karmichael Hunt, who after an impressive rookie season was selected by the Berlin Fire Salamanders in the S24/S25 expansion draft. At least from a Philadelphia perspective, tragedy befalls its kickers.

The S24 Liberty started 0-9, the result of another curse. A doll was placed in the Philadelphia locker room the offseason prior. By whom, no one knows. Nothing much was made of this, until the Liberty started blowing 4th quarter lead after 4th quarter lead. One member of the team speculated that the doll, or "Jobus", was responsible and things began to escalate. The doll was eventually destroyed, at which point the Liberty won their next game (an overtime victory against the Austin Copperheads).

The above is a very long way of describing what Brandon Booker and his Liberty teammates are up to on Halloween, and why. The players are huddled together in prayer, hoping to ward off the evil spirits (mainly just Jobus) that hope to destroy the organisation. Prayer, diligence and devotion is required in order to keep the Liberty winning games, and to save their rookie kicker Jake Fencik from the kicker curse. (500+ words. oops.)