By RYAN ARENA

L’Observateur

LAPLACE — For those who need their prep football fix during the summer or simply want a preview of the talent that will be on display this fall, St. John Parish has become just about the place to be.

As has become tradition in recent years, local teams like East St. John and St. Charles compete in a weekly 7-on-7 passing league. Each Wednesday morning, behind the library on Highway 51, many of the state’s best teams compete in the drill and look to improve themselves and evaluate their prospects for the coming season.

This season, 12 teams are competing in all, including East St. John, St. Charles, Ponchatoula, Jesuit, East Ascension, Dutchtown, McDonogh No. 35, Brother Martin, Newman, South Lafourche and South Plaquemine. The league, which began June 8, will go on for three more weeks, ending July 13.

Each team plays three scrimmages a day against different opponents.

Monica estimates that the league is the biggest in the state when it comes to having so many teams playing at the same time, in the same place.

“It’s ideal, the next best thing to playing an actual game,” said St. Charles coach Frank Monica. “You see three different offenses and three different defenses every day. It’s something we can’t simulate in practice as we run our system. Here, each week you see a fastball. There are probably 20 Division I prospects out here from all over the state.”

The Comets concluded this past Wednesday’s slate with an impressive win over Jesuit, outscoring the Blue Jays 20-0 (the scoring system includes touchdowns, two-point conversions, and two points for each interception).

Donnie Savoie opened up the scoring with a short touchdown pass to Chris Millet to make it 6-0 on SCC’s second possession. Savoie then found Sammy Miller for the two-point conversion to extend the lead to eight.

Dante Scarpero then came up big for the Comet defense, intercepting a pass. That set up another touchdown pass, this time from backup quarterback Phil Adams to Matt Torres. Adams found Miller open in the endzone for another two-pointer to make it 18-0. Macky Cortez’s interception capped the scoring for SCC.

“I thought we did fine today,” said Monica. “The main thing is evaluating what we have though.

“You learn who can deal with the pressure. We saw some improvement.”

East St. John’s second game of the day came against Ponchatoula, with the Wildcats getting their backups much work while down a number of starters, including All-State passer and Texas A&M commitment Darion Monroe.

Each team would score a pair of touchdowns. The Wildcats’ day was highlighted by a pair of touchdown passes from Leonard Davis, one to Rashad Green, the other to Thaddeus Knight.

Green had a particularly big day, also catching a long pass to set up his team’s second score and catching a two-point conversion pass.

Davis, Jeremy Piper and Cardell Coleman each came up with interceptions for the Wildcats.

East St. John coach Philip Banko was pleased to get some of his younger talent on the field to evaluate and said he was satisfied with his team’s effort Wednesday.

“The competition is good, but we don’t worry about who we play. We’re worried about East St. John right now,” said Banko. “We’re going to play our style on offense and on defense, no matter who we’re up against. I felt good about what we accomplished today.”