Gladiators Keep on Winning

May 31, 2014

By Noe Garcia, Grandstand University
From 4-14 to 9-0. The Cleveland Gladiators aren’t dominating teams, but they keep on winning. Even when they were down 17 points last week with 52 seconds to play, they pulled off an improbable win. Many are wondering just how this Cleveland team became so good.
“We finished the season [2013] pretty strong. We won two of our last four and thought we could’ve won two or three more,” Gladiators head coach Steve Thonn said. “We really added some good AFL vets: getting Dominic Jones back from Orlando was huge, picking up some good receivers to add to our guys, Shane Austin from Pittsburgh, so we added some really good AFL players who had some AFL experience and have done a great job for us this year.”
The Gladiators have now won two games as time expired to keep their perfect record intact. They seem to find another zone when they trail and play at a remarkable level that makes them a threat against any team they play. Where they find this zone is a mystery even to their coach and when asked if their focus comes from his coaching not even he could take credit.
“No, probably not. I’m not quite sure it’s probably a little bit of everything,” Thonn said laughing to himself. “We’ve been down four or five games this year and we’ve come back and won. They never panic, they’ve kept their composure, and then they just keep playing. Obviously there’s always a little luck to it, but the guys have done a great job of executing the plays at the end.”