Todd Stevens brings his Washington team back to scrimmage his hometown Princeton Tigers

Now in his third year at Washington High School, Tiger alum Todd Stevens brought his Panthers football team back to his hometown for a summer scrimmage against Ryan Pearson’s Princeton Tigers.

Todd Stevens knows he can always come home to Princeton . Now in his third year at Washington High School, the Tiger alum from the class of 1990, brought his Panthers football team back to his hometown for a summer scrimmage against Ryan Pearson’s Princeton Tigers. The Panthers are coming off 10-2 campaign in 2025 as they were crowned as Mid-Illini Conference champs and reached the Class 5A quarterfinals.

“I never pass up an opportunity to come up here, especially with these guys. I’ve got to know the coaching staff really, really well,” Stevens said. “We have a lot of fun.

We spend some time together talking Xs and Os in the wintertime. And then it’s kind of cool coming up here and seeing what we talked about in the course of the offseason and watching it put to play here. “(Princeton’s) always well coached.

Always tough kids. We know what we’re getting when we come up here. A well-disciplined team and that makes us better.”

It was Stevens who helped Pearson to take the Princeton job in 2017 and Pearson enjoys the friendship the two programs have made over the years. “It’s one of my favorite events in the summertime,” Pearson said. “I have a tremendous respect for coach Stevens and the Washington football program.

They’re perennially a 5A quarterfinalist or semifinalist, always well coached and very physical.” Pearson said it was a very productive day for the Tigers. “We know we have some kinks to work out because we’ve only had five opportunities to work with our kids (this summer).

But man, we saw a lot of really, really good things today that we’ve never seen before,” Pearson said. “That’s a really good sign for us. Just as I told our kids, ‘don’t be satisfied where we’re at.

Keep making strides forward every single day and keep getting better.’ I think we’ll be a solid football team after what we saw today.” Stevens, who was a member of Princeton’s 1989 state runners-up, has given his three years notice for retirement.

He said he’d keep his options open for coaching, possibly at Princeton. He knows he wouldn’t coach against “my team the Panthers here.”