In a little bit of a different twist from previous seasons, the Perry Bluejay football team will open up the preseason schedule on the road tonight with a controlled scrimmage against Collins Maxwell Baxter.  Perry will match up against CMB in Baxter at 6:00 tonight.  The game replaces the in house scrimmage that Perry typically held at Dewey Field.

“As we evaluated last season on ways to improve, we knew we had a pretty inexperienced squad coming back,” stated Head Coach Jason Olejniczak.  “We have a great group of seniors but still a lot of inexperience in some key spots.  So we thought we would take a shot at the preseason scrimmage that the Iowa High School Athletic Association set up a couple of years ago.  We haven’t done it before and I’m still a little hesitant on the idea due to the risk of injury but felt this might be the year to try it.”

Perry suffered a tight week one loss to ADM last year and that opening night setback weighed on Olejniczak’s ultimate decision to jump in.

“We had a tough opening night downer against ADM last year.  It was a game that could have went either way.  Maybe if we would have worked out a few of the bugs and kinks before the game it might have had a different outcome.  We will use tonight to try get the bugs worked out and see if it pays off next Friday night.”

The structure for tonight’s game will be divided into three separate units.  The top offensive unit for Perry will match up against the top defensive unit from CMB and vice versa.  They will also match up the second units against one another and the third and freshman units.  Each unit will have roughly 15 minutes with opportunities for the coaches to work with the kids.

Admission to the game is a sports drink.  If you can’t make it to the game in Baxter tonight, you can still drop off sports drinks at the Raccoon Valley Bank for the Perry football team to use during the course of the season.