Redhawks, new signees embark on 2024 football season

A lot of football fans are under the mistaken belief that the 2024 football season for Southeast Missouri State will begin next August, however, that is definitely NOT the case.

The 2024 season began on Tuesday when 10 recent signees joined the returning 82 student-athletes for winter workouts and spring semester classes.

“We spend most of our off-season getting our players better,” 11th-year Redhawk coach Tom Matukewicz said recently. “So (the new signees) are going to get to go through spring ball. They are going to get through our eight-week training cycle, before (the rest of) their class gets here in the summer.”

Of the 10 new enrollees, which constitutes half of the 2024 signing class, six have post-high school experience while four are recent high school graduates who have begun their college careers a semester earlier than most.

The recent enrollees with college experience include Adrian Patterson (defensive back, Coffeyville Community College), Trei Riley (defensive back, Trinity Valley Community College), Tyler McMillan (offensive line, Northwestern State), Jalen Nettles (offensive line, UAB), McCoy Casey (linebacker, Trinity Valley Community College), and Jared Pedraza (linebacker, Northwestern State).

The four recent high school graduates include Trey Lisle (linebacker, Fayetteville (Ark.) High School), Zane Coon (Jackson High School), Jayden Davis (linebacker, Thompson (Ala.) High School), and Peyton Brown (running back, Hillsboro High School).

“It’s a new world,” Matukewicz said of the high school enrollees. “A lot of the kids are taking online classes (and) they are just so advanced. They want to be done in December and go start their career in January.”

In the past, according to Matukewicz, he had been ‘tapping those back,” he said of high school athletes making this quick of a jump in life, but he has shifted his opinion on that topic.

“At the end of the day,” Matukewicz continued, “you don’t want to be somewhere where your mind is not.

“You don’t want to be just flailing around for three or four months. With those four kids, it just felt right, so we did it.”

Lisle, Davis, and Brown each competed in state championship games for their respective high schools while Coon was part of the highly successful Indians each of the past two seasons.

“It’s a tremendous advantage,” Matukewicz said. “Once you get into the fall, it is hard to develop the younger players because you are trying to get the older players ready for a game.

“This will move their needle along quite a bit.”

Powers comes home

The Redhawks have also added former Kelly High School kicker Ty Powers as a preferred walk-on this semester.

Powers spent the past two seasons at Trinity Valley Community College in Texas, where he redshirted during the 2022 season and competed this past fall.

Last season, Powers connected on 13 of 16 field goal attempts, including hitting a 45-yard kick.

He also made 38 of his 39 extra-point attempts.

The move to Trinity Valley was exactly what Powers had hoped it would be when he signed with the program.

“The opportunity to get better and for everyone to see what I am really about,” Powers told Semoball.com upon signing with Trinity Valley two years ago. “They score a lot of points which gives me the opportunity to do a lot of kicking, and they have proven to send guys to play Division-I football.”

Powers will join returning kickers Joe Bowman and Logan Bruns in the kicking rotation this spring.