Meet the Railers 2021 football debut

[August 21, 2021]  The start of the school year brings the beginning of fall athletics, and Lincoln Community High School is no different as the Railer football team held its Meet the Railers scrimmage Friday evening.

Railer head coach Matt Silkowski said he was pleased with the outcome of the scrimmage.

““We just wanted to get out of here healthy; that’s the No. 1 goal,” he said. “I thought we did fine, breaking the huddle the right way.”

At Meet the Railers night, both the junior varsity and varsity teams scrimmaged for essentially one quarter each. There were officials on the field as well, and coaches were sometimes on the field during the JV contest to help give players direction. Those in attendance saw numerous substitutions and different offensive plays as the teams looked to hone the running and passing components of their offenses.

In addition to escaping without a major injury, Silkowski said that, from a football standpoint, he was pleased with what he saw over the course of the evening.

“I didn’t really see too many missed assignments, for the most part,” he said. “We did put one on the ground, so we’ve got to clean up some mesh points on that.

“But we’re about where we need to be; it’s just fine tuning, cleaning it up and come back with a new approach on Monday.”

It is hoped the 2021 school year is return to normalcy following an academic year impacted by Covid. While the 2020-2021 Railer football only was able to play an abbreviated six-game schedule in March and April of 2021, this year’s group will play a traditional slate of nine games through October.

Silkowski said that being able to get back to a more customary routine has helped everyone, as there isn’t nearly the uncertainty in everyone’s minds that marred the Railers’ previous season.
“There’s not so many questions marks,” Silkowski said. “You kind of know what’s going on. It’s not a ‘hope,’ if you will; it’s a ‘this is where we’re at/this is what we’re doing’ kind of thing.”

The roster available at Friday’s scrimmage lists 11 seniors for Lincoln. With just over 40 players listed on the roster, having a roster comprised of over 25 percent seniors should not only help the development of younger players. In addition, as the team tries to erase memories of its 0-6 record during last year’s Covid-impacted abbreviated season, having experience in several key areas should be beneficial to the team as well.

“We’re going to look to run the ball and control it, but we do have the ability to throw the ball, obviously,” Silkowski said. “We have a senior, two-year quarterback in Elijah [Pollice], Scotty Battin at wide receiver is back, [Isaac] Decker at wingback Is back and [Tony] Gandolfi at fullback is back.
“So we’re kind of balanced and return a lot of experience all over.”

With all the returnees bringing experience to the roster this season, Silkowski said the team still needs to do all the basic things in order to have success on the field.

“We need to run the ball. We have to be able to run the ball effectively. That was our biggest fault in the spring, I think, is that we had a lot of missed assignments up front and it’s just tough on our backs that way. But we’re past that now and we’re much better in that regard. We’ve got to run the ball effectively, and we’ve got to tackle.”

Quarterback Elijah Pollice (7) gets the pass away as he evades the defensive pressure from Nathan Ladage (4) as Hayden Allen (78) refocuses after blocking.

There’s a common adage in coaching that any team can look good in practice, with the implication being that the true measure of how a team really stacks up can be seen when playing opposing squads. Silkowski commented that he wished the governing body for high school athletics, the Illinois High School Association, would alter its rules to allow for intrasquad scrimmages between schools prior to the start of the regular season schedule.

“It’s so hard to tell when you don’t have that opponent,” he said. “That’s something I wish they did different here in the State of Illinois is let you play somebody else in this kind of week. But, we’ll see next Friday night.”

While the evening featured the Railer varsity and junior varsity squads scrimmaging for those in attendance, LCHS also recognized all fall athletic teams at the event. All teams were announced prior to the start of the football scrimmage, and all team which were not busy in competitions elsewhere were introduced to the crowd. Those included the boys and girls golf teams, boys and girls cross country, girls tennis, girls volleyball, boys soccer, the cheerleaders and the dance team.
In addition to scrimmages by the football teams, the cheerleaders and dance squad each performed at the event.

Lincoln’s first game takes place Friday at home against Clinton. The remainder of the schedule is:
9/3/2021 - Home vs. Charleston
9/10/2021 - Away @ Jerseyville
9/17/2021 - Away @ Mahomet-Seymour
9/24/2021 - Home vs. Mt. Zion
10/1/2021 - Home vs. Mattoon (Homecoming)
10/8/2021 - Away @ Effingham
10/15/2021 - Away @ Taylorville
10/22/2021 - Home vs. Triad

All games take place on Fridays and are scheduled to begin at 7 PM. The complete game story will be available here on Lincoln Daily News each Saturday morning accompanied by some short game highlight videos. 

For those unable to attend in person, WLCN 96.3 FM will provide broadcast coverage on the radio and on mobile devices via the Mixlr app. In addition, WLCN will once again provide livestream video coverage of the games via its YouTube channel with the announcer audio patched in. More information and a link to the YouTube channel is available at WLCNOnline.com

[Loyd Kirby]