Beau Elliott learned a lot during his first season in the Arena Football League this year.

From the intricacies of the rules of a new league to techniques and skills imparted on him by experienced coaches to the surroundings and navigation of a city new to him, Elliott soaked in quite a bit.

But for all Elliott learned, what the 2001 Highlands High School graduate took with him most came from some of his more veteran teammates: Keep playing the game. Play it as long as you can, as long as your body allows.

"That's something that I have learned from the veterans, a couple guys like [eight-year veteran lineman] John Sikora, who is a Slippery Rock grad, and [14-year veteran quarterback] Sherdrick Bonner, who is one of the top 20 players in league history," said Elliott, who played for the Chicago Rush this season.

"They stressed to me to play the game as long as you can play, until someone rips the jersey off your back and they don't allow you on the field. That's the philosophy that's been ingrained in me as a player.

"You always hope the NFL will come along, and you're always under the realization it will [likely] not. It's something me and my agent talked about. If it happens, it happens. But whether it does or not, I'll do everything I can to be the best center in this league for as long as I can."

Elliott was a pretty good center this past season. He started for the Rush, which went 11-5 and won the Central Division championship but whose season ended with a 58-41 loss to Grand Rapids Sunday in the divisional round of the Arena Bowl playoffs.

The story of how he ended up in Chicago begins with the story of how he ended up in Wilkes-Barre two years, playing for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers of arenafootball2, the indoor game's top minor league.

The coach of that team is Rich Ingold, a native of Pittsburgh's Brookline section who formerly was a star quarterback at IUP. Ingold was instrumental in bringing Elliott to Wilkes-Barre, where the Pioneers advanced to the league championship game last season. That opened the eyes of AFL scouts, leading to the Rush's signing of Elliott.

"It's everything I thought it would be and then some," Elliott said of his first season playing at that level. "From an individual standpoint, I feel like I have accomplished a lot of the goals I had set [other than winning] a championship."

Elliott talked of the adjustments necessary in dealing with -- competing against -- the higher caliber of athlete that he has encountered each step of the way through his career from college to afl2 to the AFL.

While the AFL was originally designed as a league in which players played "both ways," on offense and defense, those days are being phased out. Elliott laughed when asked if he takes any snaps while on the defensive line.

"We actually joke about it, that I'm as natural of a center as you can get," Elliott said. "It's funny, any time the offensive line and defensive line coach hands out the defensive and offensive game plans, I always get skipped over for the defense.

"I honestly never see any snaps on defense. I don't mind. I'm a natural center, a natural offensive lineman. It's sort of a running joke in the locker room that I'll never see any time on defense."

One place Elliott hopes to see some time in the future is roaming the sidelines as a coach. He hopes to he hired as the ninth grade team coach at Highlands for this fall.

Elliott is 24 credits shy of a communications degree from IUP, one he says he fully intends to earns before his career is over. He said teaching intrigues him, and that coaching is definitely a calling he wants to get into.

"If there is an available opportunity to pursue teaching, that's definitely something I would do," Elliott said. "But as of right now, I'd love to get my foot in the door for coaching, go that route for now, until another opportunity arises to choose to do something else."