Offseason Point Task - 25th Anniversary Special

[JKortesi81]

It’s hard to find the exact words to describe what the ISFL means to me. I mean, I think “family” might be the word, which is very funny when you consider that I joined this league originally as a “throw away” league to just have some fun in while I focused hardcore on my SHL career. Now? I can’t imagine life without it.

It’s about the people. It always has been. From my younger days in the league where I was on OCO making friends with spec, to the werewolf server (which I know sounds stupid, but I got to really know a lot of people from this league because of it), to Adam deciding I should be his co-GM in Austin essentially on a whim for both of us, I’ve collected people that are more than just like, “internet friends”. I planned to go to Vegas this year to meet up with Adam for a beer or twelve. Thanks COVID.

Speaking of COVID, I was lucky enough to get the pandemic virus, and as a joke stated people in Austin should send me beer. Before I knew it, I was getting a package of beer sent to me from my good friend Mooty, who LIVES ACROSS THE OCEAN. And then Kyle sent me some from Texas. And then Stegs sent me some from Michigan.

These people took time out of their real lives to send me some beer and well wishes as I recovered. They’re good people. They’re real friends. I spend a good chunk of my discord time talking to them, be it about the franchise we care about so much, or real life stuff. We lean on each other through the ups and downs of our real lives, and we truly care about each other.

Same goes for bex. Say what you will about your opinion of her, I think she’s great. I enjoy getting to know her and chatting with her. Laser and Woelkers are two more examples of awesome people that Ive enjoyed having in my life, as well as my facebook friends. They’re two more quality people that had I not had the ISFL in my world, I’d be missing out on.

The problem with this topic is that the list can go on and on. There are a TON of great people in this community, and while like any family, there’s going to be issues and bickering, the main point is that when the chips are down and the times get tough, they’ll always be there for me. Just like I will be for them. So yeah. ISFL? Family. (436)

[Dagumpa]

I remember being pretty satisfied when I first started sim leagues. A simulation baseball league where I get to control a player was an awesome concept. It was like finding out you have more presents on Christmas day when I saw there were more simulation leagues. One of the leagues I heard some noise about was the NSFL. The name of the league, itself, made me snicker as, well, it has a 2nd meaning, doesn't it? But I later learned that my good friend and Chicago Kingpins teammate Bex ran the damn league. So after plenty of deliberation, I decided to create as a linebacker. I was told speed was the most important attribute in the league so I picked speed rusher as my build. I remember seeing there was a team located in Minnesota and I thought 'wouldn't it be cool if that were the team that picked me?' They were the team that picked me which led me to think 'wasn't it cool that they were the team that picked me?' My time as a member of the Minnesota Grey Ducks is still my most fond memory of this league. First off, there is no locker room that I know of which is more active. Those guys were on the Discord shooting the shit from dusk till dawn. Most of the time it was incoherent ramblings and emoji spamming but there were some solid conversations in there. Oh yeah, and I've probably seen that picture of Dewalt with his teeth busted about 100 times. The S22 Grey Ducks team might be my favorite team I was ever a part of in sim league history. Everyone was all over every game in the locker room. We celebrated in victory and called bs on the league and HO in defeat. Who could forget the 'Jamar Lackson F speed game' or all the incredible plays made by the #1 DSFL defense? Of course, it had to end in the worst way possible with an OT loss to a team that we frickin beat twice during the gosh darn regular season. I'm still not over that. I was later drafted #69th overall (funny, I know) to Duilio's Baltimore Hawks. I was called up in S23 where Dewalt was, once again, my GM along with Huskies. I've been thankful to have some fantastic people around me while I've been in this league. I'll admit to this league not being my primary focus as far as sim leagues go, but it's definitely in the top 3 (I'm only in 3 leagues). So thank you to everyone who has been nice to me throughout the months. Here's to 25 seasons and 25 seasons more...and NOTHING after that. This league is OVER after S50.

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[Rusfan]

In order to write what exactly the league means to me, we have to go back to when I first decided to join said league. It was late May, the 26th to be precise. School had just let out for the summer after a tough end in which we were all online due to the wuhan virus pandemic. I didn’t have a job, or anything to do. This was when, while scrolling reddit, I stumbled across a recruitment ad for the then NSFL. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this post, as I had stumbled across one just like it some time earlier. This time however, it had caught my eye and I thought “what the hell, I don’t have anything else to do, and I really llle football”. So I signed up as Rusfan, and made my first player, Joel Drake. Now I had played football in real life for a few years, and had actually been quite good in defense, so naturally I decided to make a defensive player. And nobody wants to be a bad player, so I resolved to make this player as good as possible, hence my constant TPE earning. Since joining the league I’ve stumbled across the wider community of sim-sports. I’ve joined a Baseball league, then left. I’ve joined an MMA league, then left. I’ve joined a bowling league, then it folded (RIP). The only league that I’ve had the energy to stay with for an extended period was this one, and I think their are a few reasons for that. Firstly, it’s about a sport that I know a lot about and I love. Secondly, this is a community that I’ve grown to enjoy spending my time with. As I write this, I’m currently sitting at work on a slow day choosing to write this point task instead of reading a book I’ve been looking forward to for weeks. Heck, I’ve even started a podcast, which is something I’d NEVER done before. All in all, this league gave me something to do in a time where many people didn’t have such luxury, and had given me something to look forward to each and every day, wether it be making the Ultimus, losing to SJS, or making it again and losing to SJS again. It’s truly a varied experience. But in all seriousness in the spirit of thanksgiving, I am thankful for the fun I’ve had, and will continue to have for a long time.

[Voltaqe]

Although I have been in the league for 5 or so seasons now, 3 of those were as an inactive player so a lot of my memories from this league were from quite some time ago and the truth to these stories may have been twisted over time. Although I have been inactive for a while this league still means quite a bit to me or I would have never returned. I have made a lot of friends throughout the seasons and am slowly rekindling those friendships that I made long ago. One of my favorite memories has to be when I was announced as a team captain for the Kansas City Coyotes my first season. I was extremely honored and honestly it meant a ton to me. I remember wanting to not let my team down and make sure everyone was hype and happy to be there that I use to make pre game hype up speeches before every game to let everyone know we were about to take the stage and make sure everyone was pumped for it. I use to try my best to make sure every speech was different and had its own flair to it so they wouldn't get old and stale. Another memory I have is being invited to join the War Room for the Kansas City Coyotes and the Baltimore Hawks. I never knew the amount of work and time the general managers and co managers put into these teams until I joined the war rooms. I was mainly there to help with scouting and assisting new players but even just that was a lot of work. I can't imagine being one of the managers who have to not only do what I was doing but also sim testing, game planning and a bunch of other things. Heck even keeping people interested in league sounds like a task that is quite draining and honestly probably too much for me to handle. My last memory I am going to talk about is when I got drafted number 5 overall to the Hawks. That was such an awesome and rewarding feeling to be drafted so high. It just showed that all the hard work I put into the league paid off and people other than myself noticed it. I do feel like I let down those people though which I am sorry for but, I don't plan on doing it again so that way I can continue to make good memories for others and hopefully overwrite whatever bad ones I had made.

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[Gwdjohnson]

To be entirely honest, I can't say the league as a whole has meant much to me, and if I am looking at things in a league wide kind of perspective, I do not really care that much about most things. But I really have to thank above all the Orange County Otters organization for being a great team full of great people I enjoy talking to on a consistent basis. When the whole situation with Jeff getting suspended happened, I was pretty ready to just quit the league because I was very angry with the decision and had all kinds of disagreements with the process (that's just water under the bridge though, whatever). But then I was invited by Jeff to the Orange County room just to hang around the locker room a bit, something that seems to be standard for prospects in this league. I really enjoyed the chill atmosphere of the room, that combined well with them being a hyper competitive team, and I was ready to just say that no other team would be able to match what I could get from being on the Otters. And this isn't even mentioning that I absolutely love otter emotes, namely cellyotter, so it was a match made in heaven.

I am a guy who spends a lot of sim league time on the Simulation Hockey League, as I have been a GM on there for a decent amount of time now and a very active figure around the site as a whole, so my time dedicated to here is very brief. Lots of times I have missed easy tasks like predictions or claiming affiliations on PTs, etc etc., and it has led to me being pretty far off a max earner. It is pretty discouraging sometimes to see how far behind the top I got, but playing for Orange County and contributing to their chill atmosphere whenever I can gives me a reason to stay active and make the most I can of this player. I mean, I just wrote 3000 words yesterday making a fake roast article of a teammate's mock draft. I wouldn't even do that on SHL lol.

To conclude, I think one of my favourite memories of something on the site would be when I was watching the draft in I believe Myrtle Beach voice chat with people. I was dying to go to OCO and rounds kept going by with me not being taken so I was getting extremely scared. Then I got hit with a fat slice of reality as it turned out I was mediocre enough of a prospect to fall all the way to the tail end of the sixth round, where OCO bagged me with the 70th pick. It was a hit to my ego, but one that was definitely compensated for by getting to play with this great team.



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[BenDover]

Creating my Account in Season 16, I was quickly overwhelmed by the forum structure, and my player Ronald "The Watt" Watkins quickly fell inactive. After being drafted to the San Antonio Marshals back then, I was still an inactive 57 TPE player for the team, as the season went on however, I realized that my player was balling out in the DSFL, as told by my Brother ValorX77. Watkins had 147 tackles on the year, 20 more than the next leading tackler, along with 3 forced fumbles, 1 Int, and 5 PDs to round out a great season. Being brought back at the end of the season made me eligible for awards with just a sliver of time left, and I remember being very excited to be even nominated for an award, and not really expecting to win any. But there it was, Ronald Watkins wins the Linebacker of the Year award, and from that point on I was hooked back on the league. After being drafted by the New Orleans Second Line in the 3rd round the next week, I was determined to become a core piece of their defense. This was not apart of NOLA's plan however, as I was quickly dealt to the failing Butchers franchise, and I unfortunately lost interest in the League again.

Almost half a year passed, but then the quarantine hit, and I was looking for something to pass the time, and again, Valor suggested the sim league, and I decided to rejoin. When creating my player, I decided to look to the NFL at the time, and with reigning MVP Lamar Jackson always facing concerns with his passing ability, I decides to flip the narrative and make a RB that many thing should be a QB, and thus Jamar Lackson was born. After being picked up by the Grey Ducks on waivers, I got to reunite with then GM woelkers, who was also on the Marshals way back in S17, the team that had done the rebranding to the Grey Ducks. After falling in both drafts, which could be expected as both a product of the RB position, and not being the best earner, but I became determined to help my team the San Jose Sabercats, as much as I could, and after making my way up to the #2 earner in the class from pick #77, and helping this great franchise win back-to-back titles, I can tell that I have succeeded in my goal. Over the past 9 months, this has turned from a hobby to something I enjoy so much everyday, being able to interact with others in these dark times, and I am thankful for the opportunities this league has given, and the work that I have gotten to do as GM of the Grey Ducks for the past 3 seasons. Hopefully I can continue enjoying Lackson's career for many more seasons. Thank you ISFL!


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[jsteele14]

Now, this may be a cross post in a sense because I know I will reference another league in this section being the Pro Baseball Experience league. As quite a few people in this league know about as the are affiliates. Anyway, off to talking about how I feel about this league. I know for a while I went inactive on here, but I continued to talk to my teammates of my inactive body throughout the many seasons I did not post in. The Colorado Yeti is a place I will forever call home. I have met many faces there and I am so glad that I joined that team and was able to be introduced to so many wonderful people there. If it was not for them I probably would have retired my last player even sooner then I planned to. I just was always having good conversations with them and we could always joke around. I know many of players that are here are also players in the Pro Baseball Experience, so I have a good talking point to new players coming from this league and sharing who my player was, the position I played, and the build I went with. I do have a part of me that wishes I could have stayed more active to see how far I could have taken good ol' Pete Parker, but hopefully this time around I can have this player last. Anyway, there are tons of great people here and like the Commissioner herself, Bex, she is also a teammate in the Pro Baseball Experience too. I do not mean to bring up that league that much but a lot of my love is from tying them two together. The first sim of my sim career and this being my second league. I was introduced to this league by my fellow buddy who I actually introduced to the Pro Baseball Experience. That being Soryantyler. Him and I have known each other for over ten years and it was something that him and I were both looking for and he told me he joined a football sim league that was almost just like the Pro Baseball Experience and I immediately was interested in joining. From there I became friends with all my buddies that were on the San Antonio Marshals, which as everyone knows is now the Minnesota Grey Ducks. Pretty ironic and wholesome to see that with my returned new create, I ended up back on their team to hopefully do them justice and play well. From there I met a few interesting people that brought me to some awesome servers that I was apart of for a good while before I went completely inactive and decided to leave them or just never check them. Those servers being the graphics server, which is the server that really got me interested in learning how to make graphics and is something I still want to get in to, but I just need to find the time to practice and make those things. Another server I had joined and I know a lot of people have known about or are also in, is the ISFL Ware wolf server. The game mode that everyone loves that is kind of like mafia, but has it's on twists to add roles and you can cater a story to anything and everything you imagine. Being the wolves, or whatever the bad guy is in the specific scenario or location, you are trying to kill off everyone and on the innocent side you are trying to find who are the wolves and get rid of them. There are a few other roles that make it all the more crazy and confusing, but that makes it even more fun. Anyway, there has been quite an influence and love that have come from this league and even though I went inactive for a time being, does not mean I will forget all the things that this league has introduced me to and brought my attention to. Congrats on the twenty five seasons in existence. Hope to still be around when this league hits fifty, or even one hundred!

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[Grum]

I just came back to this league (not fully active I should add) from pretty much going full inactive this last few seasons. This league is just a way for me to be on a team with my friends that I can't be teammates with in SHL. Thanks for teps .-.

[Mooty99]

There are so many wonderful things that I could talk about when discussing this league that it is incredibly hard to choose a single or even a few topics. I have made so many great friends a time continuing to make such wonderful friends that this league has a special place in my heart. But rather than me rabble on about friends and wonderful things it is probably best to share a few league will related memories. Unsurprisingly Most of my memories are about the Austin copperheads. I say unsurprisingly as this is the only team I have ever played for and the only team that I want to play for. I joined Austin at its inception, And I played as a backup running back in the very 1st season that the head this of course was a season to forget As Austin Lost every single game that season but we were not disheartened. To be perfectly honest we kind of expected to lose every game that season We had prepared herself for these losses and knew that we would building big things for the future. Austins plans would never short term they will always looking a lot in term games at the same time the other expense and team Chicago staffed of very strong but  Rather predictably they could not keep this place up you see Chicago had largely drafted old players and high level inactive players meaning that they could start of very well but they had a real lack of young players to keep the team going. Going into Austin's 2nd season hopes were a bit higher we knew we are going to get to win and we will excrete and excited by the prospect Of seeing the teams start To perform. Now I want going to the 1st game of that season but it goes down in history Austin initially lost the game however they will found to have huge quantities of points missing from the players there was a re-sim and Austin won however head office at the time were weak and so when a few loud voices complained that they missed this tackle or this sack the re-sim games were wiped incredibly unfairly. So Austin went into the 2nd game of the season this one was against the reigning champions Arizona and no 1 gave Austin much of a chance. Much that everybody in the leagues surprise except us in Austin who knew how good a team could be we comfortably won the game 30 points to 17 what is more my player scored a rushing and a receiving touchdown which was the cherry on the top considering that the previous season I have been a simple backup. This game was the one that really made me fall in love with the SIM and It set the tone for the culture and the out look of the Austin carpets and so that is why I thought I would share it with you today It set the tone for the culture and the out look of the Austin carpets and so that is why I thought I would share it with you today.

WC 526

[huck24]

I am still somewhat new here.  I just finished my first DSFL season and was just last week drafted to my first ISFL team.  So, my experience may not be nearly as robust as some other users, but I feel that I have already experienced some of the best parts of this league.  I came over from the SHL which was my first ever introduction to the sports simulation world.  I enjoyed it from go and have made the best player I could who is currently in his last season before regression.  I do not know why it took me this long to make a player here and I don’t know why I finally decided to do it.  But I did, and once again I’m hooked.

I forgot how fun it was to create a player, deciding which position to play, which stats to bulk up on first.  The whole draft process, talking to scouts and GMs, speculating on when my players name might be called and then when it is, meeting the players in the locker room for the first time.  These are moments I forgot about, it had been a while since I started a career and I forgot how much I enjoyed it. 

Now that I’ve been drafted into the ISFL, I’m starting to remember the second stage of a player’s career.  Molding your player into the best possible player you can.  Earning as much TPE as possible to make sure your player can perform in the big leagues and eventually start helping put some Ws into the win column. I can not wait to see what player I can make in this league and I am eager to get it going.
I was lucky enough to get drafted to a great team in the DSFL and I was able to be part of the S25 Ultimini winning team.  I’ve had my first taste of victory on the grid iron and I want more of it.  I want to keep this going and I will do everything I can to make that happen.

So, when I really think what I like about / am thankful about in this league, I have to say that it is that it just exists.  That a group of people put in so much effort for a guy like me to be able to receive so much excitement, so much joy in watching a few dots run around on a screen.  I played a lot of team sports in my younger years and I loved every minute of it.  But know that I’m older, and life has taken over, I didn’t have that same joy that I did while I was playing sports and part of a team.  This league (like the SHL) has given that back to me, and I can not express how much that means to me.  So thank you for making a old guy feel like a part of a team again!


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