IT WASN’T ENOUGH for a postseason berth, but the Fishers Freight gave fans plenty to cheer about during its inaugural season, including a five-game winning streak that culminated in a decisive 81-40 win against the Iowa Barnstormers.
Freight head coach and general manager Dixie Wooten is a former quarterback in the Indoor Football League—which has been in existence since 2009—and also used to coach the Barnstormers, whom he led to a United Bowl victory in 2018.
Wooten gave much of the credit for this year’s turnaround, though, to his quarterback, Felix Harper, who joined the team at the end of June.
“The biggest thing is adding Felix to the program,” Wooten says. “When Felix came in—he’s a proven quarterback, through college and professional football—so when he stepped in, he made my job easier as a coach.”
Harper played college ball at Alcorn State and was on the Cleveland Browns practice squad as recently as 2022. One of Harper’s main targets is Isaiah Coulter, who was drafted in the fifth round of the 2020 NFL Draft by the Houston Texans. Before finding his way to the IFL, Coulter was signed and released by four NFL teams and a Canadian Football League team.
The reward of that long, painful path to keep playing football is not lost on Harper.
“Just getting another opportunity to play the game I love. It’s been a blessing,” he says. “Just taking it one day at a time. … Understanding that football can also be taken away from you.”
The IFL players don’t get paid as much as NFL players, and the style of play is different enough that one almost has to become a regular fan in order to understand the rules and unique approach.
The Freight play at the Fishers Event Center, which opened in November 2024 and is home to the Indy Fuel and Indy Ignite. When the event center transforms into a football field, it’s 50 yards long plus end zones. Eight players from each team takes the field, and coaches stand behind the play. If a player is pushed or tackled against the wall, the play is ruled dead.
When a team is penalized while scoring a touchdown or afterward, the defending team can put the penalty “in the bank,” meaning it gets assessed after the ball is kicked off and the kick returner is tackled.
If a kickoff from the goal line goes through the uprights on the other end of the field, two points are awarded to the kicking team. Fishers kicker Calum Sutherland has shown that he is more than capable of accomplishing this 60-yard feat, even with the thinner goal posts the IFL uses.
There’s a lot of reason to believe this brand of football has caught on in Fishers. During the Freight’s win against Iowa, nearly 4,500 fans filled the seats, according to Fishers Freight and Indy Fuel president Larry McQueary.
“Residents today, they care about proximity,” says Fishers mayor Scott Fadness, who has been to multiple Freight home games this summer. “They want to live, work, and be entertained in close proximity. They don’t want to commute an hour-and-a-half to work, and they don’t want to have to drive an hour-and-a-half to be entertained. It was in that vein that we envisioned all this.”
Maybe so, but it almost didn’t happen. When Sioux Falls, South Dakota, native and IFL president Todd Tryon initially discussed the possibility of the Fuel attaching to an IFL team over lunch, the answer was far from an immediate yes.
What changed McQueary’s mind? “It was the backing of the city of Fishers. They were interested in more events here. … It’s very family-friendly, it’s very fan-friendly, and they helped us with paying for the field and some other things like that, so that made it, to me, a no-brainer.”
