JJ Raffelson to lead La Salle-Peru football

JJ Raffelson has been involved in football since he was 7.

He was an all-state player at Lake Zurich High School where he helped the Bears to a Class 7A runner-up finish in 2010.

Raffelson went on to play linebacker at Western Illinois University.

He owns JJR Next Level Training and Fitness in La Salle, and for the past two years has been an assistant football coach at La Salle-Peru.

Now, Raffelson will take the next step in his career after he was hired at Wednesday’s L-P Board of Education meeting as the school’s next head football coach.

“Football has been in my blood since I was 7 years old,” Raffelson said. “I played all the way through college. I just truly enjoy coaching and helping people take their abilities to the next level. It’s a dream come true. I live in Utica. My wife [Heather (Smith) Raffelson] is an alum. I just love the school. I’m really passionate about it and excited about what we can do at L-P.”

Raffelson takes over for Jose Medina, who resigned after the season. Medina led the Cavs to a 40-49 record and three Class 5A playoff appearances in 10 years as head coach.

Raffelson served as an assistant coach under Medina the past two seasons coaching linebackers and running backs. He said Medina, along with assistant coaches Pat Carney and Jason Hartman, were good mentors and he “learned a lot from them.”

“We went through the process and he just stood out as the most qualified,” L-P athletic director Steve Hanson said. “We felt like he had the best plan for L-P football going forward. He had a very detailed plan. He knows what he wants to get done. We felt like he’s a leader who not only will be able to pull the students in, but also he’s a leader of men, so I felt like he’d be best for the staff as well.

“All of our candidates were strong in the strength and conditioning area, but he was the strongest. He played for a state runner-up in high school. He played in college. So he just utilized his experience to develop a plan that we fell in love with.”

Raffelson said his background in strength and conditioning will help the program.

“Football season is through the summer, August, September and October, but athletes are built the other months of the year, so being able to implement some good strength and conditioning and speed work, I’ve been doing that for 10 years now. They have that in the program, but just getting another set of eyes and some different perspectives to work alongside the other coaches who are doing strength and conditioning at the school, I think it’s going to fine-tune and really take us to that next level.”

The Cavaliers will use similar schemes they’ve run the past couple of seasons.

“On defense, we will probably stick to our 3-4 look,” Raffelson said. “We’ll throw some different personnel in there based on down and distance and the types of offenses we’re facing. Offensively, we’ll keep it in the gun and utilize [quarterback] Marion [Persich] with his legs and throwing and do what we can that way.

“We’ll stick to what we’ve been doing, but just change up, fine-tune a little bit on both sides of the ball and utilize the athletes we have.”

Raffelson wants to get the program back to winning after back-to-back losing seasons following a stretch of three consecutive playoff berths around a 5-0 season in the spring 2021.

“We want to develop good young men first and foremost,” Raffelson said. “The most important thing to me is developing better sons, fathers, husbands and people in the community. Then we want to win as many games as possible. We have a good tradition at L-P, so I want to make sure we keep that up and keep developing and keep growing year in and year out. We have a good staff, and we’re going to keep adding more pieces to that staff and just keep developing.”

Hanson looks for Raffelson to re-energize the program.

“[We hope he] just moves the program in a positive direction,” Hanson said. “Obviously, we’d like to get into the playoffs. That’s down the road. We understand we have some work to do. If he can align the program from the bottom to the top, maybe down through the youth program to get everybody on the same page, I think that would be a huge bonus.

“I think he’s going to bring a lot of excitement, a lot of energy and a lot of passion. We’re excited about what he’s going to be able to accomplish.”