ROCHESTER, Ill. (WAND) - Rochester High School football is ready to step back onto the gridiron again.
"I haven't been sleeping well," Connor Broughton, a senior defensive end and fullback, said excitedly. "I've been getting like two, three hours of sleep. I'm ready for the season."
Head Coach Derek Leonard said of preseason practice, "You know you're close to that game one. And really right now you're just waiting for game one. You're getting kind of tired of practicing and hitting each other. Need to play somebody else."
In 2024, the Rockets were 4-1 in the CS8 and made the playoffs, losing in overtime. That was not good enough for the proud program.
"You know, a lot of teams would be thrilled with that, and we're not," Leonard said. "We weren't physical enough that last game, and we weren't tough enough that last game."
"It's been haunting all the players and all the coaches for sure," said senior quarterback Tanner Beal. "We've had the scoreboard up in our weight room since the week after we lost last year, so we're definitely ready to get back out there."
Leonard has learned over his two decades at the helm how to get the best out of a team. This year, he has a young squad to mold.
"They've had some experience playing last year, but they're still young," Leonard said. "A lot of juniors and sophomores that we're going to start and play. June is always the testing ground where you can see how much you can throw at them or how slow you have to take things, and it was kind of interesting this summer because each year is a different group. But this group progressed fast, and I'm happy with where they're at right now."
The new turf will be tested for the first time in a couple of weeks when Gibson Southern comes to town.
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