The News-Gazette's Preseason Top 10: Tuscola has 'got something to prove'
· Yahoo Sports
Jul. 7—TUSCOLA — Jon Pettry, Evan Vearil and Tytus Hornaday are well aware that the Tuscola football team has won 773 games since the program's inception in 1895.
They've heard of past Warriors teams that won Class 1A state titles in 2006 and 2009 and recall the team that went 13-1 and made it to the Class 1A championship game in 2017.
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And they have plenty of motivation when it comes to trying to accomplish similar postseason success as seniors this fall.
"Nobody in the school has won a playoff game for football," Pettry said.
Tuscola enters the 2026 season as the No. 8 team in The News-Gazette's preseason Top 10 thanks in large part to its senior core, headlined by Pettry at quarterback.
Pettry will enter his third season at the helm of the offense after leading the Warriors to a 7-3 record in 2025.
"Our goal is to win every game and go all the way," Pettry said. "There's nowhere else we want to go. Last ride for a lot of guys, and why not try to go all the way?"
Vearil will be one of Pettry's top targets after earning All-Heart of Central Illinois Conference honors a season ago despite an ankle injury that cut his season short.
"My role is going to be, first, to be like a team captain on the field," Vearil said. "Just keeping everyone high and not letting people get down. I play receiver, so I think I'm going to try and be the leader of that group."
Hornaday is also set to return from an injury after he collided with a teammate during a scrimmage prior to the 2025 season and missed his entire junior campaign.
Watching from the sidelines took its toll.
"These guys probably didn't notice it, but I would have times, where I would almost get all teary-eyed on the sidelines," Hornaday said. "Not that I was jealous, but more so just the fact that I was missing a year of experiencing this with my childhood best friends."
Hornaday's athleticism will allow him to help in a few ways, including protecting Pettry and carrying the ball as the team's fullback and also playing middle linebacker on defense.
"I'm really excited to have him back," Pettry said. "He's a crazy athlete. This dude can dunk a basketball, (runs) 56 seconds in the 400-meter dash and squats almost 600 pounds, so that's a pretty helpful guy to have blocking for me and running the ball."
Keeping Pettry's jersey clean will be a point of emphasis for coach Andy Romine and his staff.
"He's kind of a bulldog kid, you know," Romine said of Pettry. "Offensively, we've got to play better around him than we did a year ago, and that starts with the fact that we've got kind of an experienced offensive line coming back.
"We've got three or four kids who caught passes a year ago that are going to have to be good for him on the perimeter, as well."
A variety of changes to the IHSA football season haven't altered Romine's approach to the offseason.
The Warriors kept their June strength program the same, while an IHSA-mandated off week from June 28 until July 5 fit well with how the program's schedule has historically been structured.
Vacation schedules had to be juggled in light of a late shift in the start of the season, however, as the IHSA moved the start of practices to Aug. 5 to accommodate the expansion of the playoffs from 256 to 384 teams.
"We've got some kids who have some vacation scheduled that have been scheduled before they changed the practice start date," Romine said. "And I know there's a lot of programs that are in that situation."
Tuscola has qualified for the postseason all but twice since 1994.
The senior players are hoping to be in the conversation for a bye to start the postseason, which the top 16 teams in every class can now qualify for.
Romine isn't sure how that might play out just yet.
"I think that's a reward in baseball, or maybe a basketball regional, where you're still going to play multiple times a week," Romine said. "In football, where you're not playing a football game for 14 straight days and you don't get to crank it up and gauge yourself at a real game speed, I think that's going to be a challenge, and how people are going to approach that is going to be interesting."
Tuscola's roster is eager to place itself among other Warriors teams that have succeeded in late October and November.
Pettry remembers Tuscola's 2017 homecoming game being a big deal. He was in third grade at that point.
Vearil lives near the school and remembers walking to games with his parents.
Hornaday recalls the Warriors' rivalry series with Arcola — last contested in 2022 — drawing thousands of spectators to kick off the season.
"I learned a lot from watching those games — and especially being in the crowd," Hornaday said.
Pettry, Vearil and Hornaday have paid attention to the upgrades that have made their way to Memorial Field in recent years. The Warriors' home field received a large videoboard — 42 feet high and 26 feet wide — before the 2023 season.
The bleachers look markedly different than they did a decade ago.
Now, for these Tuscola seniors, it's all about filling the stands — and creating plenty of excitement.
"It'd be a lot better to see them full and packed out," Pettry said. "So yeah, we're ready. We've got something to prove.