By John Raffel
A healthy Kalebb Perry is a dangerous Kalebb Perry, and that is the key for the Mount Pleasant football team.
“Kalebb’s been our quarterback, and he’s obviously been a tremendous athlete,” Mount Pleasant coach Jason McIntyre said.
In the summer, Perry committed to playing football at Western Michigan University as a wide receiver. He’s proven how versatile an athlete that he is by clearing 6′ 7 1/2″ in the high jump as a freshman to set a school record, by playing for a basketball team that made a run to the Class A state semifinal round when he was a sophomore and for which he scored 40 points in a win over Heritage as a junior, and by starting as outfielder for a state runner-up baseball team.
“He played quarterback for us in week one and week two, but in week three, he got injured,” McIntyre said. “He has not played since the first quarter of week three. It was a strained knee injury, but Perry is expected to return in October.”
It’s not exactly a minor development for his team, McIntyre admitted. “It certainly changes our offense,” he said. “It changes some of the things we can do. We have confidence in Del Blake and Hunter Buczkowski taking some reps at the quarterback position. We certainly miss Kalebb’s athleticism.”
Prior to his injury, Perry was having an impressive season. “He brings a whole different dynamic to our offense, no doubt about it,” McIntyre continued. “There’s a silver lining. In developing these other guys, it’s going to give us options with Kalebb when he gets back. His natural position is wide receiver. Maybe we’ll have options to use him in that in the future as well.”
Perry was a starting receiver for the Oilers as a sophomore and as a junior. This is his first year at quarterback.
“We saw we had a need there going into the off-season,” McIntyre said. “In high school, it’s nice to have a Division I wide receiver, but in reality, you’re giving him the ball 10 times a game, at most, at wide receiver. But now, my best athlete is taking the snap every time. Against Carman-Ainsworth, we’re down at halftime, he breaks a 68-yard touchdown run the second play of the half to get us kick-started, and we won the game. He has that explosiveness you like.
“He has great speed, it’s his overall athleticism. He set the school record in the high jump as a freshman. He can jump. He’s the prototype wide receiver, tall, lanky. He brings the conplete wide receiver skill set when he’s out there.”
When it comes to quarterback, Perry focuses on running. “We do a lot of the option game. When he’s at quarterback, he gives us that spread offense look and spreads the defense out,” McIntyre said. “It gives us the ability to use him in the option-type game, where we give him the option to run or hand off, things like that, and use the whole field. He’s still able to get the ball to receivers with his arm. His running ability is one of the big reasons why we moved him to quarterback.”
When Perry moved to quarterback, the Oilers tried to cut back on the amount of defense he played. “He plays corner at a time when we need him to cover a certain player,” McIntyre said.
Obviously, McIntyre is looking forward to Perry’s return to the lineup. “I just want to get our whole team back healthy and in one,” he said. “It’s kind of been a tough [stretch] for us. We lost another wide receiver [Obie Ricumstrict] in the Midland game. He has an offer from CMU as a wide receiver. We’ve had some team discipline issues. We’re big on that here. We haven’t had a team, full-strength, ready to go. I’m looking forward to moving on and getting to that point in the next couple of weeks. When we do, I think we’ll be a really good football team.”
The Oilers won their first three games but then fell to Midland and Lapeer to go to 3-2.