Joint practice pays off for Stateline football powers Byron and Hononegah

ROCKTON, Ill. (WTVO/WQRF) — The high school football season kicks off five weeks from now. Nothing gets players and coaches in the right frame of mind for that like a good joint practice in late July.

We saw two of the best local football programs on the same practice field Thursday evening in Rockton. Hononegah and Byron went at it in a joint practice. The IHSA allows up to four of these per team in the summer. This is the second year in a row that these two programs have joined up.

Hononegah went undefeated in the regular season last year and reached the third round of the Class 7A playoffs. Byron ran the table last year all the way to winning a state championship in Class 3A.

For late July with very few summer practices under their belts, these two teams looked very good in this practice. The coaches and players say they get a whole lot out of these combined workouts.

“That was a lot of fun,” said Byron senior lineman Nolan Brass. It was a good break during camp. We’ve been working really hard in the morning and afternoon, so it’s a good break to come over here and get to play a different team. We get a lot more out of it (than a normal practice). You only can do so much going against the same guys every day, so it’s nice to see a different skill set of guys.”

Wee love to look at a team that we don’t play every year, and we sure love getting a break from hitting our own guys every week,” said Hononegah senior guard Jacob Benson. “It’s nice to go against somebody else. They’re a really good program. It’s nice to get better.”

Byron head coach Jeff Boyer says the value of these joint practices can’t be overstate. “We got a lot better tonight and that’s encouraging to see. It’s still early on, we got a lot of work to do, but you know, the practice part, things can get a little bit monotonous, so when you get to go out here and go against somebody else, that’s good.”

Hononegah head coach Brian Zimmerman was also pleased with the work his guys got in against the Tigers. “Our guys get a little amped up any time you’re going to see some different competition, so I think that this is a great opportunity to go against a top-notch program in the Stateine area and again, pit some of their better guys against some of our better guys, and we just kind of get a little bit of an idea of where we’re at.”

Summer practices will run through next week for most area teams. Then they’ll get a one-week break before returning to the practice field Monday, August 12 to start amping up for the season.

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