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Photo by John Wagner

Damion Ward is gaining an education in being a quarterback in indoor football as much as he’s getting a starting opportunity for the expansion Fairbanks Grizzlies of the Intense Football League.

Saturday night’s 53-37 loss to the previously winless San Angelo (Texas) Stampede-Express marked the second start and third straight appearance for the 22-year-old native of Los Angeles, who’s filling in Bo Bartik while he nurses neck and knee injuries.

“There’s a lot to learn from this game,” Ward said after throwing for touchdowns passes of 20 and 11 yards to Anthony Parks and running for a 12-yard score for the 1-7 Grizzlies. “The game is getting a little bit slower but it’s a tough, hard-fought game. I’ve got to get the ball out of my hand and I’ve got to throw it away sometimes. I can’t hold on to the ball all the time.”

Ward, 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, played outdoors last year with the semipro Inglewood (Calif.) Blackhawks. He played junior college football in his home state and finished his collegiate career at Morris Brown, an NCAA Division II program in Atlanta.

“Most of the league is filled with guys have played Arena I, that are kickbacks who have played big-time college ball,” he said. “So, they have a little bit of experience. We’re learning on the fly; so we’ve just go in there, practice, work hard and continue to get better.”

Ward passed for 269 yards on 29 of 45 attempts and he threw an interception in the fourth quarter to Stampede-Express defensive back Teralle Bush.

On the season, Ward is 66-for-113 for 641 yards and eight touchdowns passes and six interceptions. His 12-yard run on fourth down-and-inches with 8:30 left in the third quarter Saturday was his second rushing score of the season.

“That was a play he (head coach John Fourcade) called and they were slanting to the right side,” Ward said. “It was a cakewalk to the end zone.”

The game didn’t finish that easily, though.

Chico Cleveland, a 6-foot-2, 245-pound defensive lineman for the 1-6 Stampede-Express, sacked Ward twice but said the Grizzlies quarterback and his teammates made it difficult for the visitors to get their first win after six straight defeats.

“I just tried to get off the ball quick and they’ve got good offensive linemen,” Cleveland, a former University of Alabama-Birmingham lineman, said. “They were doing a good job all night and I just had to get it in my mind to come out here in the second half and put pressure on the quarterback.

“He’s got good blockers and he’s got rid of the ball really fast.”

Ward said the sacks were the results of missed assignments.

“But they did a good job,” he said. “They wanted it a little bit more than we did at the time.”

Ward wants to win for the Grizzlies, who have lost five in a row since defeating the Odessa (Texas) Roughnecks 22-17 on March 22 in the Carlson Center.

There’s been a few times this season -- including Saturday — that’s he’s been as emotional as he is athletic.

During his first appearance for the Grizzlies, he exchanged words with fans in Anchorage and also picked up a personal foul penalty for butting helmets with an Alaska Wild defender.

A weekend ago in Corpus Christi, Texas, he was talking to a Hammerheads player before warmups. The conversation turned into intense trash talking which become arguments with arena officials, who asked him to leave the field.

“There was a misconception in Corpus Christi,” he said. “That’s what we do — we’re going to talk to each other if we’re on the field at the same time. There’s a lot of trash talking that goes on out here.

“It wasn’t that they had ejected me. They told me I couldn’t come back to field until warmups.”

With nine seconds left in Saturday’s game, he spiked the ball on a first down at the 23-yard line to stop the clock. The clock didn’t stop, though, and he argued with the referee and was restrained by teammates.

“I spiked the ball and they reset the ball and kept the clock running,” Ward said. “So, he said he didn’t have to tell me that and he was going to keep the clock running. I didn’t know he was going to start all over and keep the clock running.”

Ward can be sympathetic, too, as he was patient with wide receiver Solomon Jones, the team’s leading receiver and one of the league’s best for yards per catch. Jones made 13 catches for 120 yards; he had no touchdowns but dropped the ball five times.

“Nobody’s perfect out here, we’re all going to make mistakes,” Ward said. “It’s how you bounce back from your mistakes and that’s what tests your character.

“We’ll be back. It’s a tough lesson learning as we go along ... most of the guys are learning as we go.”

Particularly the quarterback.