PEKIN —
Another dominant night on the ground, another successful night in the trenches and another winning Friday on the gridiron.
It wasn’t so long ago that all of these could easily describe any given week for Pekin during the high school football season. It’s been a while since any of the current crop of Panthers had experienced that kind of success.
On Friday, after nearly duplicating his opening-week 200-yard multi-touchdown effort in a 25-13 win over Sigourney-Keota, senior running back Quentin Garrels felt it was about time the Panthers got that winning feeling back to being a regular part of the season.
“It’s been a long three years,” Garrels said. “It’s finally time.”
In Garrels’s three previous seasons as part of the Pekin high school football program, the Panthers looked anything but like a perennial powerhouse. Pekin has gone just 11-16 over that stretch, with just one postseason appearance. That includes a one-win season in 2010 — Joe Donovan’s first at the helm.
For the first time under Donovan, the Panthers are off to a 2-0 start and are ranked once again. Pekin broke into the top 10 in Class A last week after a resounding opening-week 88-6 triumph over New London.
And while their win in the “backyard brawl” over S-K didn’t feature the same kind of offensive explosion, it did feature plenty of what Pekin has built their traditional success on. The Panthers scored on their first three drives of the night, controlling the ball while opening holes for positive yardage plays that came with every snap of the opening quarter.
Forget three years — the Panthers of today are looking to show signs of the teams that made the program one of the best in the state on a yearly basis.
“You hear stories, and people have great memories of the (Class 1A state championship) 1998 team,” senior quarterback Graham Wittrock said. “It’s always great to bring that kind of excitement back to the program. People are excited for us and we’re excited to get this tradition going again.”
“We’re putting Pekin back on the map this year,” Garrels added.
Donovan is no stranger to the traditional success of Pekin football. In fact, Donovan faced that tradition from the opposite sideline for a number of years as head coach at Montezuma.
It was Donovan’s district championship Braves squad of 2002 that saw their promising season end one win short of a trip to the UNI-Dome at the hands of the Panthers in a 38-29 Class 1A quarterfinal loss in Montezuma. That win is as significant in Pekin football history, as it was the last Panther postseason victory under long-time head coach Tom Stone and the last postseason win for any Panther squad.
As a player, Pekin’s head coach experienced being part of a winning tradition at Solon and helped coach Montezuma all the way to a berth in the 2005 Class 1A championship game. In his third season since replacing Stone, Donovan is hopeful that this year’s team can break that postseason drought and begin to establish themselves as a team to be reckoned with this year.
“When I came here, there’s nothing you respect more than the tradition,” Donovan said. “Coming from Solon, I know what tradition-rich football is all about. I’ve told the kids that it’s all about re-establishing that success. These are big steps we’re taking to doing just that.”
Among those big steps to re-establishing Pekin’s success has been to dominate on the ground. The Panthers have done that through their first two games, gaining 603 rushing yards out of 714 total yards of offense thus far this season.
Garrels has been the main catalyst, rushing for 382 total yards and eight touchdowns — including a game-clinching score late on Friday in the 25-13 win over S-K. While the senior back has picked up the yards and the scores, Donovan is quick to point to the young men up front that made things tough for the Savage Cobras to execute on either side of the ball.
Those men on the line, after all, could hold the main key to whether or not Pekin returns to championship glory in 2012.
“Brody Long, Jared Bond, Seth Jensen, Thomas Slaney, Eric Adam and Trenton Conger were big up front winning that battle and establishing us on both sides of the ball,” Donovan said. “It all comes back to all the work everyone of us have put in since the summer. These are big steps for Pekin football and hopefully a sign of things to come.”
Sports
September 3, 2012
Pekin looks to return championship tradition to program
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