FORT MADISON – A win on the scoreboard may not mean as much as wins on the field for the Fort Madison Bloodhounds as they continue to rebuild in 2025.
The 0-6 Hounds host 1-5 Fairfield on Friday night at Jim Youel Field in Richmond Stadium and Head Coach Derek Doherty said kids have been talking to him about getting a win for their coach.
“It’s not a win for me. It’s a win for them,” Doherty said Thursday.
“I mean, obviously, it would be really, really great to get a win, and I had a couple kids stay after practice and talk to me and they're like ‘coach, we want to get a win for you guys’. But it's not for me. A win's not going to change my life. We’ve won football games in the past, a lot of football games in the past, and it's not about me. I want it for them, you know.
“Again, it's not if, it's when we will get a win, and when we do, I'm going to wake up the next day and do the same exact things. I believe in the process wholeheartedly whether we're winning or losing, but I think that the small wins have been more impactful now “
The Hounds take on a Fairfield team that, on paper, sure doesn’t look like a 1-5 team. Junior tailback Ethan Bisgard is averaging 9.4 yards per carry and demands good contact to bring him down. Bisgard leads the Trojans with close to 600 yards and eight rushing scores. Then Fairfield counters with junior Zandrick Allison who has close to seven yards per attempt for 539 yards on the ground with four TDs.
When that gets bottled up, they can flip it out to Spencer McCready and he has 170 yards, but just on 13 carries for 13 yards per attempt.
Quarterback Voss Richardson has only thrown for 287 yards and four scores so Fort Madison will likely want to make Fairfield try to beat them through the air. But Richardson can also take off with the ball with 188 yards on the ground and a couple of scores.
Doherty said all those numbers don’t necessarily point to great backs, but a great line.
“They rushed the ball really, really well. They've got three running backs and then a quarterback that all can run the ball and, anytime that you see a team that is putting up yards on the ground, you know that their offensive line is good,” he said.
“I mean, those are the kids that don't get their names in the paper and don't get the stats, but you can be a really good running back and, if you don't have a line, nobody's gonna know that you're a good running back. So, obviously, the stats show that their running backs are pretty good, but we know that that means that their offensive line is pretty good."
Doherty said that means the Hounds will have to get back to solid tackling, keeping feet from dying at contact, and not letting things get out of hand.
“We've had trouble in our tackling and being physical and that's been a huge priority focus for us the whole season,” he said. “We've really been hammering it and I still feel like we're getting better at it. We're missing less tackles, but we do still go back to default sometimes and we challenged them that we cannot do that this week, otherwise the game will get out of hand really fast.”
Bisgard also leads the Trojans in tackles with 45, 28 of which are solo, and he has four tackles for loss. Doherty said senior Calvin McLain can also be a handful with 25 tackles, two for losses, and a sack.
Sophomore Hound quarterback Stefan Berlett is having a growth year completing 46% of his passes for just over 400 yards and three scores. He also has three picks on the year as the young Bloodhounds regroup.
Doherty said 82% of this season’s Bloodhounds should be playing developmental football but were forced into varsity action and that shows in numbers. It also shows in growth on the field.
He said this week he really got a glimpse of the future.
“For the first time pretty much all year I felt like we were a football team. We had a really good practice, and we've actually had a really good week,” he said. “It's a slow cook, but I firmly believe that it'll pay off and the kids have been buying in more and more every week.”
Fort Madison is starting to see some success on the ground when they switched to a two-back set at Keokuk. Mo Thacher and Eric Cornelis have now combined for more than 500 yards and seven touchdowns. Mt. Pleasant was able to bottle up the ground game last week forcing the Hounds to the air. Berlett threw for 100 yards without an interception, but Cornelis and Thacher were held to just 14 total yards on the ground.
Aurelio Jaciunte and Owen Huffman each averaged more than 10 yards a catch last week, but couldn’t find the endzone.
Friday’s game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. in Fort Madison.
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