Peters keeps chasing his football dream

MAHOMET — On Wednesday evening, Trey Peters stood near the Mahomet-Seymour football practice field.

The 6-foot-5, 220-pound senior wide receiver wasn’t going through the paces at the start of practice with his teammates. But he was helping out, catching passes and then throwing them back in while the Bulldogs worked on catching high punts off a JUGS machine.

The Benson Boone single “Beautiful Things,” played through the speakers during the Bulldogs’ workout ahead of Friday night’s Apollo Conference game at Mt. Zion.

The opening lyric probably sums up the last three weeks for Peters.

“For a while there, it was rough,” Boone starts off the song in his raspy voice, “but lately, I’ve been doing better.”

On Thursday afternoon, Peters and his parents sat in Bret Bielema’s office at the Smith Center on the University of Illinois campus. When they left, Peters had achieved a lifelong dream: getting a scholarship offer from a Big Ten program and the nearby Illini he has grown up rooting for.

“It was an awesome experience getting to sit down and meet with Coach Bielema,” Peters told The News-Gazette on Thursday afternoon. “I have been an Illini fan my entire life, and it is exciting to have the opportunity to be a part of the football program.”

Peters won’t get the chance to suit up again before he decides on his college home. Along with the Illini offer, he received offers this summer from Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois.

Because his senior season with the Bulldogs, off to an eye-popping start with the number of receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns he had accumulated in the first three games, was cut short during the night of Sept. 13.

After making a catch from M-S senior quarterback Luke Dyer on a third-and-long play in the second quarter of the Bulldogs’ home game against Sycamore at Frank Dutton Field, Peters cut upfield looking for more yards.

Then, his life changed.

“I saw one of my receivers come up to make a block, so I tried to cut really quick and stiff-arm a guy,” Peters said Wednesday evening. “My knee just gave out.”

He didn’t play the rest of that game and the next day, an early Saturday morning MRI revealed the grim prognosis on his right knee: torn ACL, along with a strained MCL and LCL.

“Truthfully, I didn’t think it was anything bad when it happened,” M-S coach Jon Adkins said. “I thought he’d be fine. Maybe rolled an ankle or something. When I went out there and talked to him and he said it was his knee, I was a little concerned.”

The concern grew even more later in the first half when Peters started to get up off the bench he was sitting on along the M-S sideline and head to the Bulldogs’ locker room at halftime.

“He couldn’t put any weight on it,” Adkins said. “I was pretty sure right then and there that it wasn’t going to be good news.”

Surgery is set now for Oct. 24. Peters will miss the upcoming boys’ basketball season for M-S, too, but football is his passion. Easy to see why with the 22 catches for 573 yards and seven touchdowns he put up in essentially 10 quarters of football this season.

Included in that is an M-S single-game record performance of 344 yards and five touchdowns on 11 catches during the Bulldogs’ 69-37 home win against Morton on Aug. 30.

“I almost needed a bag of popcorn and a seat just to watch,” M-S senior wide receiver Mason Orton joked. “It was really impressive and really fun to watch.”

What has impressed Adkins even more is how Peters has dealt with the aftermath of his season-ending injury. Better than the sixth-year Bulldogs coach admits he has the last three weeks.

“He’s still been a great leader for our team,” Adkins said. “You would never know that he can’t play by everything he’s continuing to do for our program. He’s talking in meetings and helping out in wide receiver drills. He’s a motivator on the sideline in games. Seriously, he’s handling it much better than I am.”

Even learning to drive with his left foot, too.

“That was a learning curve,” Peters said with a laugh. “I was good after a while.”

Dyer can vouch for that.

“We take a few trips to Chipotle a week,” Dyer said. “I trust him. He did completely fine.”

The statement can sum up how Peters is approaching his fall now. Not in a way he wanted to or anticipated. But one he is adapting to every day.

“You work all four years just waiting for your senior year to play, and then being injured and being out is definitely tough,” Peters said. “I have a bunch of good people supporting me, and I have a good plan for my recovery. That helps a lot.”

So, too, does the fact the Bulldogs (3-2, 2-0 Apollo) have won their last two games since their 21-13 loss to Sycamore. A fourth straight Apollo title is a distinct possibility for M-S, which has leaned more on junior running back Cade Ashby and senior fullback Brock VanDeVeer in the run game. Orton, a D-I recruit himself in that he has committed to play baseball at Northern Illinois, senior Gavin Hammerschmidt and junior Owen Seymour, among others, are options Dyer now targets more frequently in the pass game.

“The biggest adjustment is the fact Trey played two positions for us at wide receiver and at tight end,” Dyer said. “We’ve been adding personnel groups and taking out personnel groups and mixing people in. What’s changed for me is just making sure that all of our new guys who are in new spots know where they’re at because we essentially lost two spots on offense. Game-plan wise, obviously it’s changed without having him out there, but it’s week-to-week. We’ve had two games where we’ve run the ball more because of a lighter box and the weather conditions. If that’s the case, we’re glad to keep pounding the ball.”

Watching it all unfold, from his new vantage point on the sideline, is Peters.

“That’s probably the worst part is not going out there on Friday night,” he said. “But I’m just being there supporting my guys the best I can.”

With an Illinois offer next to his name. All the doubt and uncertainty of whether college coaches would still want him to play football that crept into Peters’ mind in the hours after learning he’d miss the rest of his senior season is pushed to the side now.

“With his aspirations to play at the D-I level, he’ll achieve those,” Orton said, “and I think it’s awesome the college coaches are still supporting him.”

Adkins, who met with Bielema on Thursday afternoon before the Illini coach met with Peters, echoes the sentiment.

“When you have put 18 years of hard work and effort into this, for it to come is a dream come true and a sense of relief,” Adkins said. “He suffered a serious injury and there was so much unknown. Like, ‘Is any team still going to want me?’ For him to get an offer from a place that is special for him, he’s over the moon excited.”