EDWARDSVILLE – Marquette Catholic junior quarterback Jake Hewitt will be taking hold of the Explorer spread offense for the upcoming 2019 IHSA football season, and is looking forward to the challenges ahead.
“This year, I’m excited,” Hewitt said in an interview prior to the Explorers participating in day two of seven-on-seven passing drills Monday evening at Tiger Stadium in Edwardsville. “We have a lot of growth; we were all sophomores, we’re all going to be juniors. This is my first year going out a quarterback, (replacing) senior Kaleb Ware. We’re excited, we’re going to be a good spread team this year. Can’t wait to show everyone what we’ve got this year.”
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The Explorers finished 5-4 in 2018 and just missed making the IHSA playoffs. And it’s still a relatively young team, with only three seniors on the roster. Hewitt knows that the younger players will need to step up for Marquette to have success in 2019.
“Just knowing we don’t have, maybe, three seniors. We graduated four or five seniors last year,” Hewitt said. “It’s just that younger guys have got to step up. And I think we’ll be a lot more mature this year.”
Marquette runs a spread offense, and Hewitt has a simple philosophy about running it.
“Defense makes a mistake, we’ve got to correct them,” Hewitt said. “There’s always a flaw in the defense, and we’ll find it. Our receivers are a lot faster this year, too. They’ll be able to beat other cornerbacks and (defensive backs), et cetera.”
In addition to the Prairie State Conference games, the Explorers have upgraded their schedule to include a pair of traditional football powers in the state. The upgrades should help Marquette immensely.
“I’m excited,” Hewitt said. “This year, we dropped some of our lower, competitive teams, and we play teams like Mt. Carmel and Quincy Notre Dame a lot further, but it’ll be a lot more competitive teams, and if we can pull off a win or two of those, we’ll have a lot better chances of making playoffs. We’ve got a lot of big games, this year. No easy games. I’m excited to see what happens.”
Hewitt is indeed optimistic about his team’s chances of getting back to the playoffs, and once Marquette gets in, there’s one thing that Hewitt would love to do.
“Keep going,” Hewitt said. “Until they stop us,” he said with a smile. “Just first year, I’ve got to give it my best shot. Everything’s new.”
