Redbugs set for first-round playoff

FORDYCE — Five months after enduring a senseless massacre, a town hidden in the Arkansas timberlands is healing by embracing the bright future of its high school football team in the present.

Football excellence is nothing new to Fordyce. Paul “Bear” Bryant played here and parlayed his experience into one of the greatest coaching careers in college football history. Eight times the Redbugs have laid claim to a state championship — four times during the playoff era in Arkansas (1990, 1991, 2019 and 2020).

The perennial expectations of Redbug football have hardly daunted this year’s team, which was just gearing up to improve on last season’s 6-6 record when Callie Weems, 23; Roy Burton, 50; Shirley Taylor, 62; and Ellen Shrum, 81, were killed in a June 21 mass shooting that wounded 11 others at The Mad Butcher, a grocery store in the Dallas County seat of nearly 3,500. A New Edinburg man, now 45, has been charged with four counts of capital murder and 11 counts of attempted capital murder and is awaiting trial.

“We talked to them after the dead period (a two-week summer period in Arkansas when no athletic activities are permitted) and after the things had happened,” said Tim Rodgers, Fordyce’s 15th-year head coach who’s been on the staff for 40 seasons. “We checked on them and made sure all the kids and families were good. But we told them when we came back, a lot of people are going to look through football and look through athletics to try and get some kind of … I guess, to try to get their minds off of that, which you never get your minds off of that.”

Only eight seniors dot the Redbugs’ roster of 39 — five of whom are promoted from the junior high team. The young group has taken on a task of turning tragedy into triumph, and at 10-0 (7-0 in the 3A-8 Conference), they are succeeding.

“We’ve got to play for everybody. We’ve got to play for the people that sadly passed away,” said Micah Gamble, a sophomore running back, safety and outside linebacker who joined the varsity for last season’s playoff run. “Then, we’ve got to play for the people who were in the store when it happened. We just play hard overall.”

There’s a reason youth has served the team very well ahead of Friday’s 3A state first-round playoff against Hoxie (4-6, 3-4 in 3A-3). Kickoff at the off-campus Bear Bryant Stadium, 101 Atkinson St., is at 7 p.m.

The winner will play Palestine-Wheatley, the fifth seed from the 3A-8, or Jessieville, the 3A-4 runner-up.

“We work so hard in the offseason and we worked the year before that, and I think that’s why — and we can stay together,” Gamble said. “After practice, (Rodgers) would make us come practice with senior high and I think that got us a taste of how it was really like. Carmilo Allen (now a freshman at Arkansas State University) and those guys got us ready because they were on the d-line rushing us every day.”

Freshman Andreal Ellison Jr. has been Fordyce’s starting quarterback from the beginning of the season, and he has played like anything but a freshman on a varsity team. The 6-foot-3, “250-something” pounder has passed for 1,753 passing yards and 20 touchdowns against 1 interception, and for good measure he’s rushed for 399 yards and 6 rushing scores.

“The way my coaches put a good system around me, they make good choices and good calls all the time,” Ellison said. “The way my teammates build me up all the time if I make a bad play — they always tell me, ‘Get back on my feet and get the next drive.’ Every time they tell me to do that, I go out there and execute and we win games.”

Even in the midst of recovery from tragedy, the Redbugs did not ease into the season by any means. They outscored eventual playoff teams Monticello (4A), Magnet Cove (3A) and Mineral Springs (2A) by a combined 156-32 in nonconference play and beat their 3A-8 opponents by an average of 42-9, including a 30-28 close call against previously unbeaten archrival Rison two weeks ago.

“We really didn’t even worry about expectations because we weren’t even top 10, so we kept our head down,” Gamble said. “Every week before then, we worked hard in the offseason, and we’re still working hard now.”

Hoxie is sliding into the playoffs on a 2-game skid, losing 52-14 to Newport and 35-0 to Walnut Ridge. The Mustangs have scored 30 or more points in three of their wins and been held to 14 or fewer points in all of their losses.

For Hoxie, senior Prechton Wilkerson has rushed for 1,257 yards and 12 touchdowns this season. Senior quarterback Dillon Guthrie has only completed 28 of 52 passes for 303 yards and a touchdown this year, but he’s another threat on the ground with 592 yards and 6 touchdowns.

“They run the ball a lot. They don’t throw it very much,” Rodgers said. “That’s what we’ve been working on this week more than anything, is getting lined up right to handle a lot of different formations. They shift. They move around. They try to get you confused up front. We’ve been working on lining up right because if we can get lined up right, we can get to the football.”

While the Redbugs are a favorite to win their third title in six years, Rodgers stresses taking the playoff run one game at a time.

“I know people probably get tired of hearing about that, but that’s the only way you can do things and try to think about winning things like that,” he said. “Our main focus is Hoxie this week. We tell our kids we have to be focused this week, do the little things and take care of the little things and we can go to the next round.”

Around town and across the state, Fordyce is once again talked about for football, a semblance of normalcy in a small town that needed it to heal.

“A lot of people were looking forward to something to do on a Friday night, something on a Friday night to go to, something good to cheer about and stuff,” Rodgers said. “I told the players, there are going to be a lot of people looking to this in some way to get their minds off of that right now. Our kids took that on, and I’m glad we’re having a lot of success. But the kids understand the community and town, parents and families and everything … it kind of makes it to where you have something good to look forward to on Friday nights.”