Playing football in Week 10 has been a habit and expectation for Peotone.
Getting to Week 11 and beyond has been a tougher challenge.
“We’ve always made a goal that the state playoffs has to be an absolute minimum for us,” Blue Devils coach Tolly Tsiamas said after a 7-on-7 competition at Bremen on June 25. “That’s just what we expect with our program. Where we’ve kind of failed — fallen short — is that we haven’t had that kind of playoff success that we were kind of hoping for.”
Peotone has qualified for the past five postseasons (the playoffs were canceled because of the pandemic in 2020). But the Blue Devils were one-and-done in four of those seasons and they’ve never won a second-round game.
Tsiamas and his players aim to change that narrative.
“This group, something feels a little different about them,” Tsiamas said. “They have very high expectations.”
Senior Tucker Cain confirmed that.
“Yeah, we would like to go farther,” he said. “But first we need to do all the practices, (work on) our fundamentals. We need to stick to that stuff.”
“I want to do more than (just make the) playoffs,” senior Ethan Bialko said. “We’re striving for greatness.”
The Devils have some skill players to replace from last year’s 6-4 team. Gone are running back Chase Rivera, quarterback Ruben Velasco and every receiver who caught a pass.
Rivera set a single-game program rushing record of 300 yards against Streator and finished with 1,231 yards and 20 touchdowns. Velasco has moved on to play baseball at Colorado-Colorado Springs.
Cain is ready to take over as the featured back after averaging 10 yards per carry and finishing with 710 yards and 11 TDs. Junior Alex Chenoweth, who had 65 tackles last season, might be one of the state’s few players starting at both quarterback and middle linebacker.
“At first, I was scared because Ruben’s been the quarterback for how many years straight?” Bialko said. “But Alex has been here on varsity for all three of his years. He stepped right into it and knew what he had to do.”
Some others who could contribute on offense include juniors Nick Cronin, Declan McMaster and Tyler Walker, who had a productive day catching passes at Bremen.
Even with some players taking on bigger roles. don’t expect the Blue Devils’ identity to change.
“About eight years ago, we started building our foundation of (what we do),” Tsiamas said. “We’re going to run the football, play solid defense and our special teams will be solid as well. When we win football games, that’s the formula. When we lose football games, we’re usually struggling in one or two or three aspects of the game.
“So these kids understand what’s expected of them. … It’s not sexy or glamorous what we do offensively, But it is effective when it’s going.”