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EDWARDSVILLE - Marquette head coach Darrell Angleton liked what he witnessed in a Monday night seven-on-seven competition at Edwardsville's practice field.
Angleton said overall, he thought his team fared well on the night in contests that featured the Explorers, Edwardsville, Cahokia, Madison and Gateway STEM.
“We’re young this year, and being able to play Edwardsville and Cahokia, so we played two of the bigger schools that were here tonight. So it was a good experience for us.”
The young Explorers will be looking to senior leadership during the season, and Angleton knows he has a good one in quarterback Kaleb Ware.
“I’ll tell you what, Kaleb Ware, my quarterback, and he’s a returner,” Angleton said, “he’s just such a natural leader. And the team follows him. And he’s really been prepared, he’s been there for everything. Even working with baseball; he’s a baseball player as well. Real proud of him.
“The seniors as a group really have played well,” Angleton continued. “We had a transfer student, Devon Berry, real athletic, nice to have him in. Ralph Williams is our big offensive tackle. So we’ve got some seniors that I think are really going to make a difference. Davion Simmons wasn’t here tonight; he’s just coming back from Texas from vacation, but he’ll be doing most of the running back duties this year.”
The teams now look ahead to the start of fall preseason practice on Monday, Aug. 6. The Explorers open at Civic Memorial Aug. 24, and Angleton and his players are looking forward to it.
“I am,” Angleton said. “They look pretty good, (coach Mike Parmentier) will have them ready, there ain’t no doubt about that. Sounds like they may have a younger quarterback, so it should be a good game. We know we’re playing at CM, always makes it a little tougher. They have a good crowd, a good fan base.”
Marquette opens its team camp this week as well, and Angleton is very excited for that as well.
“This week is team camp, so after we did this, this was our regular (Organized Team Activities) voluntaries,” Angleton said. “We start team camp Tuesday. So we start putting on the pants and kind of iron out all the problems.”
And Angleton had much praise for his senior players as well.
“I’m real happy with our seniors,” Angleton said. “We graduated 16, 17 guys last year, and you know how it is at a small school. So, you know, I’m really proud of the way these guys are working hard to try to bring along these sophomores. We’re going to have a couple of freshmen probably starting, so it’ll be a lot of fun.
“Raring to go,” Angleton also said with a smile.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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