Jackson becoming leader of Jays defense

Members of the Jefferson City Jays football team prepare for practice Saturday morning, Aug. 5, 2017 after Media Day at Adkins Stadium.
Members of the Jefferson City Jays football team prepare for practice Saturday morning, Aug. 5, 2017 after Media Day at Adkins Stadium.

Elijah Jackson spent more time in the backfield last season than some of the players the Jefferson City Jays will have taking handoffs this season.

Jackson doesn't take handoffs, he tracks down whoever does for the opposition - sometimes before they reach the line of scrimmage.

The senior linebacker made eight stops in the backfield last season, and he's shooting for the stars for his final year with the Jays.

As a junior, Jackson recorded about 100 tackles. His target number for this season is quite a bit more.

"Actually I set myself to be at 200 tackles," he said Saturday morning during the Jays' media day. "I know that's super high, but my parents always tell me if you don't shoot for the stars you might not hit anything. Other than that, I want to be an all-state linebacker just like anybody else."

Considering his goal for number of tackles, there's no surprise about what Jackson's been working on during the summer.

"I've worked on my tackling. More of my footwork," he said. " I feel like I could have had about 150 (tackles last season) if I would have actually made the plays when I needed to. And conditioning. I've worked on my conditioning."

Conditioning may come in handy when trying to accomplish what Jackson is attempting to.

Jackson and the rest of the Jays got plenty of work in during the summer by attending a team camp at Missouri State and facing Lee's Summit and C.B.C., one of the Jays' 2017 opponents, during another camp.

"We got to see some teams that we're never going to see," Jays coach Ted LePage said about the Missouri State camp. " It was unbelievable the kind of comradeship that our team developed down there."

The camp with Lee's Summit and C.B.C allowed the Jays to go up against tams that combined to go 18-5 last season.

Jefferson City lost a shootout, 65-59, last season to C.B.C, which eventually lost to Blue Springs in the Class 6 semifinals.

"They have a lot of returning starters," Jackson said of C.B.C. "Some of the younger guys didn't actually get a chance to play against them, so getting exposure to them now and letting us see how they work and how they play, it allowed us to become better athletes and work harder."

Last season's game against the Cadets was one of four times the Jays allowed 40 or more points. Jefferson City also held its opponents to 13 points or less in four games.

Jackson said he wants to take more of a leadership role to prevent what happened against C.B.C., Battle, Har-Ber (Ark.) and Rockhurst last season.

"Big plays are going to happen at some point in the game," he said. "It's hard to shut everybody out or shut everybody down, so it's not about when it happens, it's about how you react when it happens."

The results this summer have been mixed for the Jays, Jackson said, but added, "If we had to play right now we'd be pretty good."

But there's still a couple weeks left to work out some kinks before the Jays head to McCluer North for the season-opener Aug. 18. During that time, Jefferson City will keep using what it learned in the summer in hopes of being prepared to defeat the Stars for the 10th straight season.

"We got to see the high level talent that's in the state of Missouri and the steps you have to take to get there,"LePage said. "You don't come out of (camps) as winners or losers. Like I told our team, 'You're 0-0 when you come out of those things.'

"The only thing we did was film it, we will continue to watch film to see, 'OK, when you're playing against somebody that's more talented than you in C.B.C. - and they do, they've got talent galore - here's the thing that you can win this.' Stance, start, alignment, assignment. If you do the little grunt things, those are the things that win football games. And I think our team has really kind of warmed up to that idea."