Fairfield football to host Pekin for Meet the Trojans

This fall Fairfield and Pekin will take their big brother-little brother rivalry to the football field, sort of.

New Trojan head coach Nate Weaton and Panther skipper Brent Blakely have agreed for their teams to scrimmage this August ahead of the teams' season openers.

'It's become difficult to find people to scrimmage as the state controls your schedule,” explained Blakely. 'You don't know until every two years when they redo your cycle, but Fairfield is a team that there is a high-percentage chance that we're never going to play each other on our regular season schedule. We just need someone to give us a look and that time of year you just want to stay healthy and fundamental and see where your kids are at and allow your kids to compete and I feel Fairfield will give us a lot of great looks to do those things.”

Does Blakely expect to get better looks from a bigger school?

'In Iowa high school football you're going to see different things all the time from single-wing to spread. To me, it's just a thing where we're not going to go in there trying to win because that's not our focus. We want to do well and perform and we'll talk about that when we get to that point, but at the end of the day we want to continue to be fundamental and get ourselves ready to play Sigourney that opening week.”

Coach Weaton

'We are really excited to host Pekin football for a team scrimmage at our annual ‘Meet The Trojans' night this Fall,” said the first-year Trojan skipper. 'Coach Blakely and I believe this is a great opportunity for our kids, and our communities.”

What does Weaton expect to see?

'For us, it will be a real test against an opponent in a controlled and scripted environment, without the pressure of a win or loss. A much better learning opportunity compared to a traditional intra-squad style scrimmage. It allows us to prepare our kids to compete, and gives our staff the ability to widen our play calls, so we can comprehensively evaluate schemes before we head into the season. When we're done with the evening, our staff will breakdown film, make the necessary changes and get ready to prepare the team for Week 1.”

Pekin will play at Fairfield Friday August 23 at 7 p.m. The Trojans will host Clear-Creek Amana week 1 and as mentioned, Pekin will play Sigourney.