Romeoville football seeks another playoff trip

ROMEOVILLE – After earning its first playoff appearance since 2002, Romeoville’s football team has its sights set on getting there again and doing even better.

With seven performers back on offense as well as about half of last year’s defense, coach Jeff Kuna is encouraged that his Spartans can improve upon last year’s 5-5 mark.

“One of the biggest things that I’m encouraged about is that we have a lot of experience coming back on offense,” said Kuna, whose squad fell, 18-14, to Rich Central in the Class 6A playoffs. “With Kelvin Jones at quarterback, Gill Whitaker at tailback and Chuck Hunter and Manuel Nartey at outside receivers, that core group with all of their experience is going to play well into what we can do offensively.

“We have three of our five lineman back so now we’re looking at who those other two linemen are going to be, as well as who our tight end and fullback will be. We think that we’re getting answers since we have some kids who are doing good things. I think by the time that we get to week one, we’ll have those spots figured out.”

With so many key players back on offense, Kuna has been able to go with a little different approach during events like last week’s 7-on-7 that Romeoville hosted.

“The guys feel comfortable in the offensive scheme because we’re going to do a lot of the same things that we did last year,” Kuna said. “You’re always looking to see if there’s another wrinkle that we can add to it, but at the same time, we felt good about a lot of the things that we did in the run game and pass game, and we’ll build off of those. With a lot of the same personnel back, we want to take things to another level.”

It’s always helpful when an offense returns a quarterback, top receivers and a tailback. That gives senior quarterback Kelvin Jones encouragement heading into the season.

“Most of our line is coming back, so they’re going to know most of our plays, and Chuck and Manuel are really good receivers, so we’re going to see if we can get better,” Jones said. “People have been working hard so far and we’re all trying to get on the same page.

“We’ve got some of our defense back but the underclassmen have been doing a good job of stepping up. Most of us have been playing football together since we were little kids and we’ve grown up together, so we’re all really close and we know how to pick each other up. We want to get back to the playoffs again and then see how far we can go.”

The Spartans coach feels that one of his team’s strengths is its solid group of seniors, who seem very determined to improve upon last season’s success.

“This senior group has been together for a long time,” Kuna said. “They had some success playing together at the youth levels and a good core group of them have stuck together since then. They were very happy that we got into the postseason last year but the sentiment afterward was not just being satisfied to get there, but that they could have done better. We feel that we can be a team that hopefully can do something in the playoffs.

“I think with every team, health is always a main concern. We’re going to carry 50 players so it’s very important to us that we’re good at every position and our backup is just as good since we’re not going to go much deeper than two-deep at many positions.”