New Look Hearts Ready for 2015 Opener

Click here for the Hearts' complete 2015 schedule

The Effingham Hearts, sporting a new coach for the first time in 24 seasons, will begin the 2015 football season Friday night playing host to the Breese Mater Dei Knights.

Game time at Klosterman Field is 7pm. Hear the game on 979XFM and watch for a video replay of the game online Saturday morning. 

Brett Hefner begins his tenure at EHS, succeeding Mike McDonald who retired as coach following last season. Hefner had been serving as offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Lincolnway North, but has varsity coaching experience at Shelbyville, Centralia and Lincolnway Central.

In addition to a new varsity coach, most of the Hearts' assistant coaching squad is new to the EHS coaching sidelines. Derek Logue is back and will serve as coordinator. Aaron Adams and Shane Smith also return as assistants. Blake Wesselman, Nick Bushue and Christian Silva, all former EHS athletes, are also serving as assistant coaches.

The new look for the Hearts will also extend to the playing field. Effingham will feature a new quarterback in Hudson Graham, who took over as JV quarterback midseason last year, along with running backs Drew Vasquez and Parker Seachrist. Vasquez started throughout last season and had success carrying the ball, but opportunities were few with a stable of running backs like Zach Miller, Billy Arndt and Travis Durbin.

There is some experience on the offensive line in Griffin Paige, Grant Piggush and Ryan Hails while others like Brendan Dawkins, Ash Blunt and Wyatt Keith either played sparingly or will be seeing their first varsity experience on offense. Blake White and Tucker Denton will be the wide receivers for the squad, while Keith will be the tight end. 

Graham will handle punting chores, while Sean Zerrusen will slide over from the soccer team to do the kicking for the football squad.

On defense, Blunt will join Hunter Diveley at tackle while Caleb Martin and Noah Spencer will serve as defensive ends. Paige and Harrison Smith will start at linebacker. Effingham will employ five defensive backs; Kody Line, White, Grant Wolfe, Jordan McCabe and Vasquez.

For the first time in a while, there are no changes in the Hearts' schedule. Mascoutah will be here next week, before the Hearts will begin a two-game road trip to Bethalto Civic Memorial and then Charleston for the Apollo Conference opener.

Effingham comes back home for a game against Salem, and then hits the road to Taylorville. The home season ender will be against Mattoon and then the Hearts will travel to Mt. Zion to end the conference season and then Mahomet-Seymour to close out the regular season.

Start time for each game is 7pm on Friday.