EDWARDSVILLE – The Marquette Catholic football team came away with many good performances during the second day of seven-on-seven passing drills held Monday night at Tiger Stadium in Edwardsville.
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The sessions, allowed under IHSA preseason rules, had the Explorers and Tigers participating with Belleville Althoff Catholic, Granite City, Cahokia, and the Edwardsville junior varsity. taking the place of Civic Memorial for the evening.
And Marquette had many good performances, along with getting some of their JV players a chance to gain experience.
“It was fun, it was fun,” said Explorer coach Darrell Angleton. “We did pretty well. We played Granite City, and we played Cahokia. And the third game was a JV game because CM didn’t show up. It was really good, so my JV guys that came got a whole set with Edwardsville’s JV, which was perfect.”
The session between the Explorer and Tiger JV teams will help both sides in the long run.
“Oh, absolutely,” Angleton said. “Their JV is probably sophomores and juniors, and I’ve got a bunch of freshmen and sophomores, but it’s good. It’s really good for us because they’re a talented team, and they’re a higher bracket, and it makes my kids work. So I was happy with them.”
Angleton saw many good performances from his players and was very happy with the results.
“I had a lot of good looks,” Angleton said. “We’ve got a player that’s a soccer player that’s thinking about playing football, and he caught three touchdown passes today. So I was happy with that. It was really good, overall basic work. When Jake (Hewitt, this year’s starting quarterback) was on, his reads were really good, he’s getting more confident in his reads, and then we had a workmanlike, across-the-board receiver. We made some mistakes, but for the most part, there were better plays than there were bad plays.”
And conditions were ideal, with the weather being very pleasant and cool, with virtually no humidity, as a cold front moved through the area earlier in the day, that brought with it heavy rain early in the morning, dropping temperatures into the 70s at the start.
“It is, and again, this has a use for us,” Angleton said, “because of some of these teams that come in here, they’re not passing teams, they’re running teams. And we’re a spread team, so we’ve got to be able to execute like this, and this will be Jake’s first year as a starting varsity quarterback. But I’m pleased with him. He’s a big, strong guy, and I like our run game. So we’re going to be a very nice, balanced spread team.”
The Explorers hopes and expectations are still high when Marquette opens the season Aug. 30 against CM at Public School Stadium.
“Well, they are,” Angleton said. “And a couple more freshmen signed up to come out, so that’s good. Again, we’re looking at 35 guys on the squad, so we bring up three or four more guys, we’re pushing 40, which is where I really want to be. You don’t have 15 guys playing JV, and that’s a tough row to hoe when you play a game with 15 guys. So that’s good as well. So, yeah, things are looking positive; we go into team camp next week before we get the week off, and then, it’s the real deal.”
And Angleton also has another weapon up his sleeve as well: Sophomore running back Cliff Chandler, who had a breakthrough season as a freshman in 2018.
“I just think it’s exciting,” Angleton said. “Be watching for Cliff. Cliff got to catch a few balls today, but my running back, he’s gonna be fun to watch, for sure.”
There’s one more day of seven-on-seven sessions left, and it will take place at Tiger Stadium on Tuesday, in a make-up date for a session that was rained out July 15.
Chris Rhodes also contributed to this story.
