Redbird Football opens Grebner Era with a 42-6 win
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| Metamora prepares to snap the ball during the second half of Friday's game against East Peoria. The Redbirds won the season opener by a 42-6 final score. PHOTO / ALEX STAAB |
East Peoria, Ill. - March 19th, 2020. Exactly 365 days ago, the District 122 Board of Education officially approved the hiring of new Head Football Coach Jared Grebner. One year later, his tenure officially began with a road game against East Peoria, a 42-6 rout.
Yet, when the new leader was asked about the hiring approval and season opener dates lining up, he, rightfully so, was more concerned about the on-field performance.
"I had no idea about that. That was far from my mind. I was just worried about this team getting their first win," Grebner said.
You could see the emotion, the hype build up as it got seconds closer to kickoff at Eastside Centre on Friday. With the kickoff delayed a brief moment, it gave fans time to take in the players getting a little extra hyping up of each other in before the ball was kicked off.
Once the ball was finally in the air, the Redbirds responded quickly, with Payton McDonald taking it in at the 15, and just getting tripped up before tallying 60 yards on the opening return. Although the host Raiders' defense was able to stand tall against the Metamora offense on the first drive, Coach Grebner picked up on something quite familiar to athletes at the start of seasons.
"I thought we saw some good things, but I thought we had some nerves. We were a little shaky on some snaps," he said, adding that things got more comfortable on the offensive side of the ball as the game progressed.
One of the ways that came to fruition was junior running back Ethan Petri, who finished with an unofficial tally of 77 yards, 71 of which came in the first half. Grebner had a lot of ways he could describe how well his running back did against the Raiders defense.
"He was working downhill. He's one of those guys that has a quick burst off the line and knows how to lower those pads," Grebner described, adding that Petri simply "is a hard guy to tackle".
Something Metamora had quite a few of tonight were 1-yard touchdowns. That got going when junior quarterback Connor Willerton kept it up the right side for a score.
The Redbirds, as Coach Grebner would say, were "flying around", and that was true with the special teams unit, being assertive on a high snap on a Raider punt attempt, then getting after the punter in the end zone to make it 8-0 early in the second quarter.
The running attack was made even more versatile. After Petri had a solid first quarter, junior Garrett Taylor found his way into the fold, running for two scores. By the way, those two scores were for a total of two yards, the latter of which occurred with all of 45.8 seconds until halftime, was also aided prior by a 40-yard run from senior Zach Poston, who was marked just shy of the goal line.
Taylor's two touchdowns put the Redbirds up 29-0 at halftime. A lone third quarter scored on a Willerton 1-yard run up the middle had the Redbirds just shy of running clock starting the fourth quarter.
One thing remained true, the Raiders weren't backing down. In fact, they would capitalize on a Metamora fumble and their quarterback Damien Brown would find Ryan LaHood in the end zone to remove the zero from the scoreboard with 9:06 to go.
Willerton would score once again, setting the aforementioned final score of 42-6. Senior kicker Hunter Roedell converted four extra point attempts in the win.
One player that made a lot of noise defensively was Ryne Begole. The senior, bound for Olivet Nazarene next year, found his name being called numerous times over the public address system, always on the tackle, or quite close to it. Coach Grebner took note of that, citing his varsity football experience.
"He played really well. As a senior leader, as a senior captain, I didn't expect anything less from him."
As far as where they go from here? Grebner feels there's room to improve, and acknowledged there's always correctable moments this early in the season.
"Just have to clean up some of the silly mistakes, but it's been 511 days. There's going to be jitters. There's going to be mistakes," he added.
511 days. That's a lot. As you may imagine, the new head coach was thrilled to be back out on the field again.
"It means everything for these kids. Just to see them out there, excited, able to play football again. It's been a roller coaster ride. Especially the seniors. They've been such great leaders and hard workers. It's great to see them out there with all their other teammates."
Metamora (1-0, 1-0) will host Limestone (0-1, 0-1) next Friday at Malone Field with a kickoff scheduled for 6:00pm.
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