Springs Valley Community High School

The Springs Valley football team took another step toward kicking off its regular season on Friday, traveling to Eastern (Pekin) for a scrimmage. At the end of the night, second-year head coach Jason Lowe and his staff were excited about what their team had managed to put on tape. What stood out the most to Lowe was the way his players got after it in the trenches. Time and time again the Valley offense was able to get into the endzone, scoring on more than half of its 10 plays from the 10-yard line in the redzone session and tacking on a few more scores on its longer drives as well. That was in large part because of the physicality of the Blackhawks’ offense line, which opened up holes for a talented group of running backs to utilize. “The biggest thing was just that we were physical. That’s kind of the question mark when you try to run the ball and you’ve got a stable of running backs is are you going to be physical enough up front to run it? I think we were,” Lowe said. “Pekin was obviously bigger than us, Eastern Greene will probably be bigger than us, but when you score that many times and you really only run three plays you’ve got to be pretty physical up front to do that so that was good.” When it came to who was doing the scoring for Springs Valley, it felt like everybody got in on the fun. James Walls, Konner Chase, Larron Childers, and Ezra Mills were just a few of the Blackhawks who hit paydirt. Lowe hopes that over the course of the season that will help keep his skill players fresh as no one or two of them will have to carry the load for an extended period of time. “So far they’ve been so awesome about not caring who gets the ball. They don’t care who’s in, they don’t care where they’re playing, they just know that we’ve got those six, seven, eight guys who are really dangerous with the ball,” Lowe said. “They just do a great job of playing together, going with whatever the call is and just making the most of it.” Defensively, the Blackhawks showed that they have playmakers at all levels of the defense. Childers and Xander Cook were solid as ever at the defensive end positions while Keaton Pritchett stood out at cornerback. What Lowe was most impressed by though was the play of the guys in the middle of his defense. “Not to take anything away from your Larrons and Xanders and guys that we’ve seen, but the biggest thing that stood out aside from those guys was Jack Dalton, Teagun Rominger and Jonas Hammond in the middle,” Lowe said. “Jonas and Teagun were two question marks for us, we didn’t know what they’d look like, and it seemed like Teagun made a bunch of plays at the line of scrimmage and it seemed like Jonas really flew around the field. I thought that was big.” Now, the Blackhawks are moving on to Eastern Greene, their week one opponent. They’ve won two of their last three against the Thunderbirds and have every intention of picking up another victory next week. They’ll carry some confidence with them from their scrimmage, though they’re not a group that was in need of that sort of boost. “I think they got some [more confidence]. We’ve joked for a few weeks that I’ve had to learn how to handle these guys in terms of the way they carry themselves and the way they approach practice and now games. They’re a different bunch,” Lowe said. “I think they believe in what we do, I think they love playing football together and being on this team together, and like we always say their effort and attitudes are great and so far they’ve been very disciplined. “When you put all of those things together, good things are going to happen and it looks like that’s where we’re headed.”