La Salle-Peru showing improvement in third 7-on-7, Seneca off to good start

SENECA – The La Salle-Peru football team took the field for a 7-on-7 for the third time this summer when the Cavaliers traveled to Seneca to face the Fighting Irish.

With a young roster, L-P coach Jose Medina was pleased with what he saw.

“We did fine,” said Medina, whose team went 4-5 last season. “It’s just getting the kids out here to compete instead of just competing against themselves. This is fun for the kids too, but we also tell them it’s also about trying to get better from the previous time.”

The Cavs previously had 7-on-7s at Streator on June 22 and at Mendota on June 27 with a full scrimmage at Streator scheduled Saturday.

Medina has seen improvement, especially in freshman quarterback Marion Persich.

“Our quarterback is young,” Medina said. “He’s learning and picking things up. He’s doing much better. You can see the growth over the last three times that we played.

“This weekend will be a true test because we’re actually going to scrimmage Streator and Lincoln. It’ll be a nice way to get into camp week.”

After the scrimmage with Streator and Lincoln, the Cavaliers have camp from July 29 to August 2 leading into the IHSA dead week.

While the Cavs had several 7-on-7s under their belt this summer, the Fighting Irish are early in their summer schedule.

Seneca, which went 11-1 and lost 20-14 in overtime to eventual Class 2A state champion Wilmington last fall, has youth and high school camps this week.

Wednesday was the Irish’s first 7-on-7.

“I’m just excited to get going,” Seneca coach Terry Maxwell said. “I told the kids from the start, ‘Are we going to reload or are we going to rebuild?’ and I think they took that challenge and they want to keep this thing going. Making it to the playoffs for a third year in a row would be a big accomplishment.”

Maxwell said the Irish were focused on defense against L-P.

“Coach [Levi] Derber, our defensive coordinator, got a call from L-P. He used to coach over there and they asked if we wanted to do a 7-on-7. Defense can always use the work, so it was mainly a defensive focus tonight,” Maxwell said. “We’re a run-first team, so a lot of plays we ran tonight are not plays we’re typically going to run during the year.

“Really, [we wanted to see] effort and coachability. We’ve done a couple nights of coverage work. We wanted to see how the kids can respond and react. We want to see that they’re able to retain and correct and just continue to get better this early in the summer.”

While the Irish were facing the Cavs in a 7-on-7, Maxwell spent a large part of the night working with offensive linemen on the practice field working on power and trap plays.

“Our line is going to be all new,” Maxwell said. “We’ll see if some kids can step up and make an impact.”

Maxwell said the Irish have had a positive start to the summer.

“Our effort from Day 1 has been great,” Maxwell said. “We’re having youth camp in the morning for third through eighth graders then we come back and do our high school camp at night. We have a ton of high schoolers helping in the morning then coming back for then night session. The energy and positivity have been really good to see.”