Kankakee County teams look for summer tune-ups at Central 7-on-7 competition

A total of 16 teams converged on Central High School in Clifton for the annual Central 7 on 7 and Lineman Challenge on Saturday, continuing their summer workouts by facing some live competition.

Teams from Class 1A up to 7A took part, with the 7A representative Bradley-Bourbonnais as the largest school in attendance.

“We’re playing games, trying to get better, and getting the kids together and competing against other people,” head coach Mike Kohl said. “It just helps us break our summer up four days into camp. It’s been a great day for us today.”

Ellis Johnson, who will be stepping into the starting quarterback role as a senior this season, said it was nice to keep working on running the offense with a cast of talented players around him.

“We’ve got guys to throw to for days,” he said. “Hopefully, we can put it together once it’s 11 on 11 against some other teams.”

While the Boilermakers are still helmed by a longtime coach in Kohl, several teams came into Saturday with new coaches, including at Kankakee where former defensive coordinator Ed Hazelett is back with the Kays.

“We just want to see the kids play fast, kind of learn the concepts of what we’re doing and just run around and have fun,” he said. “Things are going great. The kids are getting used to how we prepare and how we run things with me doing it.”

Helping carry over some continuity for the Kays is a large group of returners from last year’s 10-2 team, including junior quarterback Phillip Turner.

“It’s been great trying to work with the new coaches that we have to try and build a better team and just get better,” he said.“We’re coming out here [to Central] and just getting better, too.”

Bishop McNamara also has a new head coach for 2025 with Greg Youngblood taking over. He said he wanted to see the players take in everything they experienced on the field Saturday, positive or negative.

“If we make a mistake or an error or just see something new that beats us, that’s a good thing,” he said. “Use it, get better, and build from that. I’d much rather that than come out and dominate and not be tested.”

The overall experience for the team Saturday was a positive one, said senior receiver and defensive back Coen Demack.

“We’ve done this years in the past, and it’s always been great,” he said. “The atmosphere out here is always great.”

A former Bishop McNamara standout was also at Central on Saturday, but not repping the Irish. Jay Slone, a 2013 McNamara grad, was there with Streator as the new Bulldogs’ head coach.

“The biggest thing we want to see is competition,” Slone said. “I want to see our boys competing at the highest level, make sure we’re having team unity and really pushing ourselves to be better each and every play.”

The host Comets were yet another team Saturday working through their first summer under a new head coach in Jeff Perzee, a 1994 Central grad and former assistant. He said the opportunity to host Saturday’s event was something he was looking forward to.

“I have amazing assistant coaches that have been doing this for a long time, and [defensive coordinator] Matt Sertich started this many years ago,” Perzee said. “He’s taking the lead today, and I’m just helping out, but it’s been an awesome experience to finally come out here and play some 7 on 7 football.”

While the 7 on 7 games were taking place, the participating team’s linemen were having a competition of their own.

The Lineman Challenge portion of the day saw groups of five from each school take part in weight lifting, tire flipping, relays, sled pushing and a tug of war to finish things off.

Coal City’s group of Brody D’Orazio, Emmett Easton, Cade Poyner, Wyatt Koehn and Sean Viles ended the day by finishing second in the tug of war to Kankakee, but racked up enough points in the other events to win overall.

Poyner said the challenge, while fun, was also a great chance for the group to show out against some bigger teams.

“We really showed some strength today against some bigger competition,” he said. “We had the sled push’s fastest time, and we were the only team to break eight seconds.”