2025 Outlook

Coach: Apostolos Tsiamas

Career Record: 52-42

Last Playoff: Class 3A First Round, 2024

Best Playoff: Class 3A Second Round, 2023

2024 record: 6-4

The Peotone football team will be seeing a bit of a youth movement in 2025. This upcoming season’s senior class is about half the size that 2024’s group was, leaving the Blue Devils a large junior class and quite a few players who will be seeing varsity action for the first time.

“We’re really young this year,” head coach Apostolos Tsiamas said. “We’ve only got about 10 seniors on the team, so we have a lot of juniors that are going to be playing for us. We’ve just got to concentrate and focus on getting kids up to par and getting ready to play varsity football, with a lot of them not having done it.”

The Blue Devils will have some experience at key positions, particularly at running back where the team has arguably its largest gap to fill. Gone is All-Illinois Central Eight Conference back Chase Rivera, who ran for 1.231 yards and 20 touchdowns last season to go with 249 receiving yards and four receiving touchdowns.

Tucker Cain was excellent as the secondary back last season, rushing for nearly 800 yards and 11 touchdowns, and will be back as one of the team’s seniors. Nick Cronin came on late in the season as a sophomore, tallying 145 yards in just three games. With this duo of returning backs, and returning starters Evan Pane and Omero Isais back on the line, the running game should be able to provide some stability while the Blue Devils work in a new quarterback.

Ruben Velasco started every game behind center as a senior last season, but Alex Chenoweth will assume the role as a junior this year. Chenoweth was also one of the team’s top defensive players last season, finishing third on the team with 65 total tackles and will be the team’s top returning tackler.

With these returners and players in leadership positions helping provide some stability, Tsiamas said the main focus is just getting some of the less experienced players ready for the reality of being out on the field in game action.

“We’re really trying to focus on football IQ, just having a better understanding of what you have when you’re out there,” Tsiamas said.

Still, with a young team there may be a bit of an adjustment period early in the year. Regardless of this, Tsiamas said the team is still aiming for a fifth straight playoff berth in 2025, and ideally a playoff win after picking up just one over their previous four postseason appearances.

“Normally when people say young team, that means you’re probably going to have some growing pains and struggles,” he said. “That may or may not happen with us, but the expectation is we want to be in the state playoffs and we want to compete.”