Hounds banking on maturity for 2026

MEDIAPOLIS — Derek Doherty lined up his Fort Madison football team in the south end zone and gave them a simple message.
No more excuses.
Friday’s scrimmage against Mediapolis was a chance to see the Bloodhounds against a program that traditionally is one of the better ones in southeast Iowa.
“We’re trying to find our identity, and we feel like we kind of have a good grasp of it,” Doherty said. “We feel better leaving (the scrimmage) this year than we did last year. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but that's just where we're at in our program.”
The Bloodhounds haven’t won a game in the last two seasons, but come into this season as a young team that is a little bit older than last year. The three leading offensive players last season — Aurelio Jaciunde, Stefan Berlett and Moses Thacher — are juniors now, and there is more maturity among the rest of the roster as well.
“There is growth, without a doubt,” Doherty said. “There's growth. Is it ever as much as you want? No. and I don't think it ever will be. But there was definite growth. There's a lot to be proud of tonight and build on.”

That work begins next week as the Bloodhounds open the season at home against Burlington.
“There are a lot of fixes that need to happen,” Doherty said. “And we've talked to our guys. Coaches often appear negative because they're always talking about what needs to be fixed. That's the nature of the beast. We talked here just now, I think a lot of our fixes tonight are more mental than they are physical or schematic. But I think that's why this scrimmage is so great because these guys got to feel what it's going to be like on a Friday night when it's hot and you're playing somebody else that you don't know, and that's the game of football.”
Mediapolis gave Doherty a good look at his team.
“(Mediapolis coach Brian Borrison) and his staff, they’re phenomenal, and they always play with just an intensity, and I appreciate that about them,” Doherty said. “I love how he gets those guys to play with that. We had some good conversations over there on the sidelines with our team.. What did they do really well against you? Can you implement that into your game? The offensive line was talking about, ‘Man, they're really good with their hands.’ Yeah. So what do we have to do? We’ve got to get better with our hands too. Those lessons are what we learned, and we need to take that moving forward.”
It all went back to Doherty’s message.
“We just talked to them just now about dropping the excuses,” Doherty said. “You mess up, you own it, and you move on. That's just man stuff. That's just being a good dude. And we had some excuses about why things didn't go our way in certain plays, and they've got to learn to get past that. It’s the mental competitive maturity. We’re skilled, but we have to get out of our own way mentally. If we can do that, we’ll have a good season.”