Alex Harvey wasn’t happy with how his football season ended last year, but the senior fullback and linebacker will have a chance at redemption when the Hubs take the field for their first varsity game of the 2017 season next Friday against the Corliss Trojans.

Harvey was one of five Rochelle Township High School seniors to be named captains of this year’s varsity football team, joining Ehren Metzger, James Kerfin, Kyle Eyster and Noah Mershon. Harvey rushed for 657 yards and six touchdowns through six games in 2016 before suffering a season-ending ankle injury. He said he was excited to learn he’d be co-captaining this year’s team, and both he and his fellow captains are aiming to build upon their successes last year.

“It’s exciting to have the opportunity to lead my teammates,” Harvey said. “I’ve been through everything our younger players are going through so I think I can help them out in that way… We have a really good core group of players who have played together for a long time and we have a lot of juniors who compliment us really well… Everybody knows what’s at stake this year, and we’re all going to try and accomplish what we couldn’t accomplish last year.”

Rochelle quickly emerged as one of the top teams in Class 5A last season, piecing together a 5-1 record through six games including victories over Northern Illinois Big 12 Conference rivals Morris and Geneseo, who each qualified for the postseason. But the Hubs struggled to close out the year, falling to Sterling, LaSalle-Peru and Sycamore before losing to Sycamore again in the second round of the playoffs.

The losses left a bitter taste in many players’ mouths including Metzger’s, who said injuries were a big reason the Hubs weren’t able to capitalize off of their early-season success. Metzger ran for 602 yards and seven touchdowns during Harvey’s absence while finishing second on the team in tackles, and the senior is expected to play a key role for Rochelle in 2017, which will be head coach Kevin Crandall’s final year at the helm.

“We should’ve beaten most of the teams we lost to, and I think injuries were what prevented us from going further in the playoffs,” Metzger said. “It looks like everybody wants to be here, and everybody is working a lot harder than they did last year. It’s a good feeling to know that everybody is on the same page. The motivation for us is to go deep into the playoffs, and it gives us a little extra motivation knowing it’s coach Crandall’s last year too.”

Both Kerfin and Eyster, who each received All-Conference honors for their respective performances last season, echoed Metzger’s sentiments. The two seniors have become fixtures on Rochelle’s offensive and defensive lines, with Eyster making the All-Conference First Team on offense and Kerfin earning First-Team All-Conference on defense behind 24 tackles and a team-high 2.5 sacks.

“I was disappointed because of the injuries, and everybody went into a slump once the injuries hit,” Kerfin said. “It was hard to battle through it because we lost a lot of key players on both sides of the ball. A lot of us seniors are more dedicated this year and we want to do better than we did last year… We all showed up this year and we’ve showed that we want to be here and we want to have a better season than we did last year.”

“We’ve grown up together,” Eyster added. “Last season was pretty disappointing with all of the injuries and it wasn’t the way we wanted the season to end, but there’s nothing we can really do about it. We need to capitalize this year. I think the senior and junior classes compliment each other really well… We’ve had a big goal for a long time.”

The Hubs will kick off the 2017 season at 7 p.m. next Friday, and Rochelle will aim to continue its long stretch of success against Corliss, who fell to the Hubs by a score of 53-0 last season. For Mershon, who will be under center at the varsity level for the second straight year, the goal this fall is not only to make a postseason push, but also to send off Crandall, who is Mershon’s stepfather, on a high note.

“I think we have more hunger to win,” Mershon said. “Last year, we didn’t think we were going to do that well until we started off well, but things fell off once players started getting hurt. This year, I don’t think we’re going to stop. We’re going to go hard all the time… It’s hard to think about last year, but this year is both for him and for us seniors.”