Prep, Peabody prepare for opener

For the St. John’s Prep football team, Friday night’s season opening game against Peabody will be a welcome relief to what can only be classified as a week that no program ever wants to go through.The Eagles will take the field against the Tanners without junior Jared Coppola, who is still hospitalized at Children’s Hospital in Boston with a fracture in his neck suffered in a scrimmage against Lynn English last Friday. And while Coppola is in the thoughts and prayers of the Prep players and coaches, there is a game to prepare for and coach Jim O’Leary knows his team needs to be focused on that.”We’re trying to bounce back and prepare the best we can,” O’Leary said. “I told the kids when we got together Monday that the game goes on. It will long after I’m gone and these kids are gone. You have to go out there and honor the game.”O’Leary also mentioned that the Bulldogs and coach Peter Holey sent Coppola an English jersey with his number on it that was signed by the entire team.”It was very nice of Peter and Gary (Molea) to do that. I talked with Jared’s mother and it meant a lot to her,” O’Leary said.Peabody coach Scott Wlasuk also knows that it will be tough for the Prep to keep its focus squarely on the game.”It really puts things in perspective,” Wlasuk said. “It shows you that there are a lot more things that are more important than winning and losing a football game. It has to be tough mentally and emotionally to experience a difficult situation like that. Our thoughts are with Jared and his family.”There is a football game to be played on Friday at Lee Field and both teams come in off very short preseasons. The Eagles had two scrimmages cancelled, the English scrimmage shortened because of Coppola’s injury and a fourth against Classical that was understandably tough just two days after the accident.”I don’t know how prepared we are but we’ve been practicing for a while,” O’Leary said. “The kids will play hard. We can’t have turnovers or penalties and we have to go out and execute. The team that does that will win.”The Tanners have also had what amounted to a crash course in a new offensive system under new coordinator Ed Melanson, who has installed the single wing that he ran while calling the plays for a Super Bowl championship team at St. Mary’s.”In reality, we’ve only had two weeks to prepare,” Wlasuk said. “With the constraints that the MIAA puts on practice, it’s tough to prepare mentally and physically. But we’ll be ready.”St. John’s will look to senior tailback George Sessoms to shoulder the load. Sessoms had his breakout game in the Eagles’ upset win over Everett last season and will be the feature back for O’Leary’s team after the departure of Brendan Felder, who moved to Pennsylvania over the winter. Sessoms is a Peabody native and Wlasuk knows stopping him will be difficult.”It’s a huge task to stop George,” Wlasuk said. “I don’t think you can ever really stop a player like that completely. We have to avoid giving up the big play. That’s something that plagued us last year.”Peabody returns a talented running back of its own in Mark D’Addario and O’Leary knows that preparing for an old-school offense will be a challenge.”That offense can create some problems and is really hard to prepare for,” O’Leary said. “Scott has done a nice job and he has them all excited over there.”