For St. Vincent football coach Tim Schumer, Friday night’s jamboree was all about physicality. Coming into the four-team event in Scott City with Kelly, East Prairie and Portageville, St. Vincent had yet to hit anyone that wasn’t in blue and gold.
“In practice, when we’re hitting each other, it’s easier to pull them back than to try to get the physicality out on them,” Schumer said. “In practice, there’s a lot of times where I’m like, ‘Hey, take care of our guys,’ but out here, they came out ready to go.”
The varsity played against Kelly in the first scrimmage and Portageville in the final contest of the night, while the junior varsity saw a majority of the snaps against East Prairie.
“They came out with some intensity and they played fast, which we wanted to see,” Schumer said. “We got three good games in and the young guys stepped up and played against some bigger guys from East Prairie. That was good to see them step up.”
The biggest thing for Schumer during the event was to come out healthy.
“The biggest thing that scares you is that you don’t want to have injuries and for everyone to come out healthy,” Schumer said. “To be able to play and get the speed and physicality of the sport and get a taste of it is great. That way you’re not going into week one wondering how fast you must play? You just want to come out healthy and we did that tonight.”
The Indians came out healthy and also put the ball into the endzone a few times.
Junior quarterback Christian Schaaf found Trevor Moonier for a 15-yard catch and Schaaf also found Cruze Reitzel with a good pass.
“I liked the passing game,” Schumer said. “We were good with all the reads. There was one we missed that was just a little out of reach. For the most part we did well. Christian looked good and Nick looked good and Wyatt got a taste of under center as well. I’m proud of all three guys.”
Buchheit and Winkler rotated in during the scrimmage with East Prairie and didn’t waste any time find the endzone. Clayton Gremaud took the first pass from Buchheit for six and Carson House also found the endzone of the final play.
St. Vincent will play Marceline on Saturday for the opening game of the season. Schumer feels like his team is ready to go.
“We have a lot of good days stacked together and the team is ready to roll,” Schumer said. “We are ready for the first test of the year.”
Pirates stay healthy
For Perryville football coach Brent Roth it was good for his team to finally hit someone else.
“It was good to get the jitters out of the way and hit someone else,” Roth said.
Roth and his team kept it simple in a three-team jamboree with host St. Pius and Crystal City on Friday.
“You don’t want to show too much and we played our base stuff, but it’s good to get those nerves out and see how you do against someone else,” Roth said.
Roth felt like his team didn’t do as well as they could have.
“I thought we underperformed a little bit,” he said. “We played against two triple option teams and we had practiced against that for about five minutes. I never really try to scout or over prepare for a jamboree. We worry about ourselves and then we get ready for week 1. Offensively things were there, we didn’t have any big plays.”
Roth said there were a few things that stood out to him as positives.
“Up to this point we have been tackling well,” he said. “We were substituting pretty quickly and the JV got a lot of reps. Our JV played against both team’s varsity there for a little bit.”
Roth said for the most part his squad came out healthy.
“We had a freshman who had an ankle sprain, but it’s nothing serious,” Roth said. “that is goal number one to get out of the jamboree healthy and we did that.”
Perryville will face Oakville at home this Friday. Oakville is a Class 5 team and the Pirates will come out ready to play.
“The guys are ready and we have been flying around in practice,” Roth said. “We are going to make a few tweaks to the gameplan and we should be ready to go.”
