Eastern League of American Football (ELAF) Set To Go

| American Football | 04/23/2015

The Eastern League of American Football – ELAF  – kicks off its fourth season on April 25, 2015.

Four teams will battle to reach ELAF Bowl IV on September 26. The Minsk Zubrs and the defending champion Minsk Litwins are both from Belarus and the Moscow Bruins and Voronezh Mighty Ducks are from Russia.

ELAF - ELAF Bowl schedule

The four teams competing for the ELAF Bowl will play each team in a home and away series and the top two teams will play in the championship game.

ELAF - Minsk Zubrs action

Minsk Zubrs

ELAF was originally launched in 2012 and the Moscow Bruins won the first bowl that year. The Minsk Zubrs took the ELAF Bowl title in 2013 while the Minsk Litwins won last year’s championship.

The Minsk Zubrs is the oldest team in Belarus and was founded in the 1990’s. The club won ELAF Bowl II and features one of the league’s top running backs in Alexander Krivonos.

Their opponent on opening day, the Moscow Bruins, have the leading tackler in the ELAF in 2014, Roman Pavlenko.

In the other game, the Voronezh Mighty Ducks will travel to Minsk to face the Litwins, the ELAF defending champions. The Ducks played in the top Russian league in 2014 reaching the league quarter-finals before bowing out to the Astrahan Gladiators.

ELAF - Moscow Bruins action

Moscow Bruins in red

The Ducks team captain, Alexey Perepelov, led his team in tackles in the 2014 season.  The Litwins boast the top running back in the ELAF and the league’s 2014 MVP, Denis Halimon.

Roger Kelly is an editor and a writer for AFI. A former PR Director the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League for 7 years, he now lives in Sweden writing about and scouting American Football throughout the world.