When the Arena Football League suspended the 2009 season a little more than a year ago, before folding altogether, Orlando Predators veteran Kenny McEntyre was left to ponder a life away from the football field.

He was hardly alone. Players were sent scattering to find a means to provide for their families last December while faced with the reality that their careers may have abruptly ended.

There was no ceremonial sendoff. Little, if any, advanced warning. And as far as McEntyre was concerned, no real trust in the talks that followed suggesting the league would indeed return.

“I’ve got two kids that depend on me,” McEntyre said. “When they canceled the season, I started thinking about what I was going to do with my life after that.”

Kenny McEntyre (Photo by Reinhold Matay)

The all-time leader in interceptions and three-time defensive player of the year spent the past year working as a personal trainer when he was not on the golf course or joining teammate Marlon Moye-Moore in hosting youth football camps throughout the area.

“I was just getting acclimated to the real world, “ said Moye-Moore, who also launched his own fitness company and coached Pop Warner Football this past year. “Coaching and training those kids was probably the best thing for me.”

It proved an amicable distraction from the reality he and his peers faced.

“We were shocked [upon learning of the AFL’s demise]. I’ve been playing football now for 17 years and it was hard to sit and watch the NFL during a time when I’m usually preparing for my own season.”

On Thursday, the Predators made their return to town official as part of the newly formed Arena Football One (AF1), where salaries are expected to be significantly lower than they ever were in the AFL when they reportedly ranged between $30,000 to $189,000 a year. Despite that, McEntyre and Moye-Moore brushed off any reservations they had of returning for one primary reason.

“My passion to play football outweighs the pay,” said Moye-Moore.

Now if only local fans are as open to reunions as the players are.

– Back In Black –

Predators’ managing partner Brett Bouchy vowed all along to bring arena football back to town in some form or another and he backed it up by banding with several other AFL owners to help form the new league.

He’s now confident that The Jungle at Amway Arena will again be packed with fans just as it once was.

“April 30th will be a sellout,” Bouchy declared on Thursday, after opening the team’s press conference at the Citrus Bowl Varsity Club with a public apology to fans, coaches and players for the cancelation of the 2009 season.

“It’s going to be a crowd like none other. It’s going to be rocking in The Jungle, I fully expect that,” he said.

Because of conflicts with the schedule of the Orlando Magic, the Predators will start the new season with a bye during opening weekend (April 2-3) then will be on the road the next two weeks before another off week sets the table for the home opener against the Iowa Barnstormers.

The 18-week regular season will run through July 31 with 15 teams participating. Franchises have been meshed between the big-market holdovers of the original AFL and the outposts that made up arenafootball2.

“Our fans love Orlando and as long as we keep playing hard and give them a reason to come, then I think they’ll be there,” said Moye-Moore.

The organization is banking that familiarity will help bring many of them back. Local fans throughout the years have helped give the Predators a unique home-field advantage ever since coming onto the scene in 1991.

With the recent signings of AFL star-power league wide, and the deals reached locally with former players such as McEntyre, Moye-Moore, T.T. Tolliver, Justin Cleveland, Damon Mason along with the hiring of former Orlando quarterback Pat O’Hara as the organizations fourth head coach, there’s a bit of nostalgia already brewing in the air.

Though maybe with one particular face noticeably missing.

Before introducing O’Hara to the public, Bouchy extended an open invitation to former head coach Jay Gruden, who spent his time away from arena football as the offensive coordinator with the United football League’s Florida Tuskers, “to contribute in any way on the football side of things that he can.”

So, maybe the return won’t exactly be like old times, but with a little more than three months remaining before Orlando’s beloved Preds take the field it looks as if Bouchy’s vision is truly taking shape.

“We’re back,” said McEntyre. “We’ve got to let ’09 go. It’s 2010; it’s a new year. Arena football, for whatever reason is back here in Orlando, and it’s time to put the past behind us.”

– More Orlando Predators Coverage –

Recap at Orlando Sentinel

Team page at ArenaFan

Story and video at WFTV

Schedule announced at MyFox

David Baumann at BHSN

Greg Dawson at Orlando Sentinel

Hugo Lindgren at Slate

Stephen Ruiz at Orlando Sentinel

Woody Wommack at Southwest Orlando Bulletin

Noelle Haner-Dorr at Orlando Business Journal