A turnaround football season for Anamosa, trying for first winning season since 2017

CEDAR RAPIDS — It was a group of guys that hadn’t won much. Yet one that curiously felt it was going to this season.

Soothsayers these Anamosa Blue Raiders turned out to be.

“It’s not a surprise,” Easton Wheeler said. “I think we expected it, to be honest with you. We returned a lot of good players. A lot of kids grew, too, which helps. I think we’re a really close group, and we really play well together.”

“We knew that we should have a better season than we have had in the past,” said Vince Diers.

Anamosa goes into its Senior Night home game Friday night against Camanche with a 4-2 record and a legitimate shot at the Class 2A state football playoffs. A victory Friday or next week would assure a winning regular season for the school for the first time since 2017.

Anamosa won eight games total in the five seasons after that, including one win each last season and in 2021. They call this a turnaround.

Coach Caleb Huss was asked how it came about.

“It’s kind of a multiple-part answer. It’s not any one thing,” said Huss, in his fourth season as head coach after a stint as an assistant in the program. “Number one, this group has been awesome. It’s something that last year, we were really young. Yeah, we took our lumps at times, but I feel like this group really learned a lot last year and really grew. I really felt like we were playing our best football at the end of the year, so we had a little bit of that momentum going forward.

“Then we had some really strong success in wrestling (last winter), had success in the spring with track. Sent a lot of guys to state. Then, obviously, over the summer with baseball. So I think the guys knew they could do it. It was just a different sport.”

Anamosa lost to 3A Maquoketa in its opener, 17-6, but got a late touchdown in Week 2 to topple 3A Center Point-Urbana, 10-7. Then it was a 21-7 win over Vinton-Shellsburg,

District play began with a competitive 38-20 loss to top-10 ranked Monticello. Wins over West Liberty (38-16) and Tipton (16-10) followed.

“For me, it was the Vinton game,” Anamosa’s Austin Scranton said, when asked to point to the moment he and his teammates realized things were going to be different this season. “Just showing that the CPU game wasn’t a fluke, that we can do it over and over. Showing everybody that it’s not just a one-time thing, that we’re going to continue to do this. That it’s going to be the new nature around here.”

“Getting a win like that against CPU early in the season helps bring momentum for the next few games and gives you confidence,” Diers said.

A junior, Scranton is his team’s leading rusher and tackler. His younger brother, Hudson, a sophomore, blocks for him at fullback.

Diers is the quarterback. Wheeler, Grayson Weers, Nate Fischer, Jacob King and Angelo Cudahy have all had equal receptions, more or less.

Defensively, Anamosa runs a 3-4 scheme, with all of the above guys mentioned playing a part. Wheeler’s younger brother, Miken, also plays both ways.

You gotta love the multiple brother combos here.

“We’ve grown up together and played a lot of sports,” Miken Wheeler said. “To do it at the varsity level is pretty cool.”

“I think the team’s coming around to it, knowing that we can be great,” Hudson Scranton said. “But that we can only be great together, that everyone has to be good and on the same page. That we’ve got to work as a team.”

Huss and company hope this is just the beginning of good things, as there are a lot of underclassmen seeing playing time this season. Making the playoffs would be a huge thing, as it has only happened four prior times at the school.

“I just think this would be a huge step,” he said. “You start looking at our program, and we’re ready to make that jump. Then when you are full of juniors ... One, it’d be a great way to send out our seniors, a lot of them dressed up as young kids and took their lumps and grew.

“Not only would it be awesome to send them out that way, but also have a lot of guys return and really start to build this thing is obviously the goal.”

“Getting a win like that early in the season helps bring momentum for the next few games and gives you confidence.”

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com