Ottawa hosted St. Bede for competitive, productive 7-on-7

OTTAWA — During Wednesday night’s 7-on-7 between Ottawa and St. Bede on the practice field south of King Field, there was a mix of solid plays from both squads on both sides of the ball.

While Pirates coach Chad Gross and Bruins coach Jim Eustice were generally pleased what they saw as far as Xs and Os go, both were more satisfied with the main thing they were looking for – that being competitiveness.

“Just like when the games officially start, in these 7-on-7s you first want to be competitive,” said Gross, his team coming of a 3-6 season. “We want kids to be aggressive out here and be confident in whatever aspect we are asking of them. We want them to be running the right routes, making the right reads, being in the right positions and rotating and communicating.

“These 7-on-7s against other schools give the kids an idea of some of the formations and looks teams that we are going to play are going to use against us.”

Gross says the Pirates return a mix of experience and youth heading into this fall’s campaign that begins hosting Plano on Aug. 30.

[ Photos: St. Bede vs Ottawa 7-on-7 football ]

“We have a lot of juniors on the roster this year, but not a ton of seniors. That said, many of the juniors saw time at the varsity level last season, some were two-way starers,” Gross said. “We bring back about half our starters on both sides of the ball, but a key will be four of those guys in our offensive line and a couple more that rotated on the defensive line.

“I think as far as up-front goes, because of the experience, we are farther along in that aspect as far as being ready to go. We have a lot of guys to fill the skill positions, but many of them will be gaining varsity experience as we go.”

St. Bede will have to fill the quarterback position, but Eustice feels the rest of the spots will be filled with players back after different levels of varsity time.

“We only had eight seniors on the roster last year, so we have quite a bit of experience back this year,” said Eustice, his club coming off a 5-5 season that included a fourth consecutive playoff appearance. “We lost (standout quarterback) Max (Bray to graduation), but we have a great competition between juniors Gino Ferrari and AJ Hermes right now for that QB spot. They are both great athletes, both pitchers in baseball, both play basketball, both great athletes in general, it’s just Gino is left-handed, and AJ is right-handed. We also have most of the offense including our line back, so I expect that side of the ball to be as good as we’ve been.

“We also have a lot back on defense, including all of our linebackers, where I expect us to be much better this season. They all done a tremendous job working in the weight room, and their attitudes since we’ve gotten things started this summer have been fantastic.”

Eustice agreed with Gross in the fact the 7-on-7 was a chance for his players to “fly around” and “get a little taste of game action.”

“We are just coming out of our youth camp where we had almost 60 kids attend and had four days or workouts last week, so this is our first 7-on-7,” Eustice said. “Last week was a ton of review, so going against Ottawa today is a chance to see where we are at with that. Really, we just want the kids to compete, run around and hopefully do the things they are supposed to be doing like running the right play and playing the right coverage.”

Ottawa and St. Bede will meet in Week 9 at the Academy. The meeting between the two programs will be their first since Sept. 12, 1980, when the Pirates grabbed a 21-6 win over Bruins. Ottawa leads the all-time series 16-6-2, the first meeting in 1923, and topped St. Bede the past five matchups.

“With some schools moving to new conferences, we didn’t have a Week 9 opponent, and the options we were looking at were either Class 7A or 8A schools, teams from way down in southern Illinois or out of state,” Gross said. “Then in the spring sometime Jim reached out to ask if we still were looking for someone, and we were. From there, both of our athletic directors worked it out.

“I think the game should be good and exciting for both communities.”