Perryville football coach Brent Roth put it bluntly.
“We are in full throttle right now,” he said. “We are full go.”
That includes getting ready for the opponents on the schedule, which remains unchanged from one year ago. Perryville played Oakville, Windsor, and New Madrid County Central, while competing in the Interstate 55 Conference for the first time in 2022.
Roth sees it as a good thing that the schedule basically remains the same.
‘We have film on them and we know what they are about,” he said.
Oakville is a Class 5 school, who finished last season at 6-5. Roth understands that they are an improving program since Perryville scheduled them years ago. Oakville defeated Perryville 48-0 last season in week 1.
“They have a bunch of kids out and they have a lot of athletes,” Roth said “One of their kids is one of the highest ranked kids in the St. Louis area. They are going to be a challenge. However, the game should help us with our district standings because we are playing up one class.”
Windsor finished the season 4-6 after beating Perryville 28-7 in week 2 and New Madrid County Central returns a large portion of its team that finished 9-2 and handed Perryville a 65-18 loss in week 7.
“They are built on team speed and last year I don’t think we would have even fared well against them in a flag football game,” Roth said. “We will have to come up with something to keep them in front of us.”
A majority of the Pirates’ schedule is made up of teams in the I-55 conference. Perryville went 3-3 last season against conference opponents with wins over Bayless, Grandview, and Herculaneum on homecoming. St. Vincent is the defending conference champions and will face the Pirates in week 3 on Sept. 8.
“We are the biggest school in the conference, so you’d like to think we have a good shot against all of those teams,” Roth said. “As we learned last year, there are some quality teams in there. We are par with all of those teams and we should have some close games.”
