Fairfield’s Meet The Trojans night kicks off seasons

FAIRFIELD — Fairfield High School’s Meet the Trojans Friday night capped an evening of information and festivities with a football scrimmage against Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont.

The evening began at 5 p.m. with a parents meeting in the gym, that was then divided into sport specific meetings for football, volleyball, cross-country, girls swimming and football cheerleading.

The Trojans swimmers first meet is Thursday in Ottumwa. The first cross-country action is Monday in Knoxville.

Introductions of individuals on their teams began at 6:30 p.m. on the track. Hy-Vee served dinners at the stadium with the proceeds donated to the Trojan Athletic Boosters. Youth football registrations were conducted as well.

The volleyball team had an intrasquad scrimmage in the gym.

Head volleyball coach Diana Drish was pleased with the night.

“There is always something to work on,” she said. “This is a great night to move athletes around to different positions and play with some lineups.”

The Trojans and head football coach Nate Weaton used the scrimmage to discover some valuable information.

“We did have a few guys surprise us (Friday) night, and that’s exactly why a scrimmage is so valuable,” Weaton said. “For now, we’ll keep the surprises to ourselves.”

The Trojans had scrimmaged Pekin in previous years, but the Panthers have a new coach and a new way of doing things that they are working on.

“A big thank you to coach Lloyd Sisco and the EBF team for coming down,” Weaton said. “Overall, I was pleased. Both offensively and defensively, we stayed pretty basic, so we could evaluate personnel based on our script.”

The script had some ad-libs added to it with highlights.

“Our young guys were absolutely the highlight of the night,” Weaton said. “We were incredibly impressed at how well they played on both sides of the ball — very exciting to see the future of our program excel right out of the gate.”

As with any scrimmage, the idea is to identify areas that are progressing and those that are stagnant.

“We did see some things we liked, had few surprises, and certainly came away with things we need to work on this week as we prepare for Mt. Pleasant,” Weaton said.

The first football game of the year is at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Mt. Pleasant’s Mapleleaf Athletic Complex while the first volleyball match will be Thursday when Albia, EBF and Hillcrest Academy visit.