Blue Devils WIN The Thanksgiving Classic

(Courtesy of Sean Sweeney-Fitchburg Sentinel)
And my Fitchburg-centric column:
FITCHBURG — And so we come to it, the post mortem, the review, the sizing up of where we stand after three months of gridiron futility.
It is fair to say that the 2025 edition of the Fitchburg High football team had an incredibly challenging season. Its 2025 was, while the win-loss records were identical, it was not a literal carbon copy of 2024; it was better than 2023, for certain.
But in this 2025 edition, we saw—in certain respects outside of what we saw on the scoreboard—the effects of slow, subtle growth among the fugue and despair. Yes, Virginia. We did.
We saw the adjustments the FHS offense made as the season progressed. Most expected Zaccheaus Collins, a junior, to return to the corner of Circle and Broad as the Red Raider quarterback; instead, we learned that he had transferred to St. John’s of Shrewsbury, which forced Hall of Famer Paul DiGeronimo to move Jerome Best into that slot, taking away from his backfield.
A month into the season, Fitchburg managed to move the ball almost effortlessly, as sophomore Jamani LaGuerre, operating as a wildcat quarterback, and by introducing a form of the jet sweep against Nashoba Regional, showed that the Red and Gray had a few additional options. Add in the play of freshman Jacobe Kuttler at fullback, a breath of fresh air. So, too, was the play of Cole Lashua, when the Red Raiders got the ball to him; Lashua can play anywhere.
Fitchburg’s true problem offensively, though, was the inability of its offensive line, which took a step back from 2024, to move anyone and make space for its running backs. FHS had extreme difficulty in running between the tackles, and only found what limited success it had by running outside to the edge. The Raiders tried to counter this later in the season with a few extra players in the backfield than what would be considered normal, all in an effort to do something to open a hole up front. I credit the coaching staff, regardless of how many times they went back to the ol’ drawing board, for doing whatever they could. Plain and simple, though: the kids up front need to get tougher, and stronger. It’s not that they don’t have size; they have that. They just need to get tougher than the guy across the way.
Defensively, well, that’s another ball of wax. FHS couldn’t stop a nosebleed this year—and there’s a good reason for that: a good amount of the players in the secondary were extremely young. The secondary found itself shredded regularly with pass plays, and just like the offensive line’s inability to open up holes, the defensive line struggled to close them. If the opponent found a seam, they were off to the races. But in the matinee against Sharon, despite what the scoreboard said at the end of the day, the defense—specifically the secondary—rose to the occasion and played solid deny.
There are lingering questions as to the future. FHS will lose 12 seniors to graduation next June, which means that a great deal of this 2-9 team is coming back—if they all elect to stay in Fitchburg instead of transferring to another school, which is the fight that it has battled against for most of the last half decade. The Red and Gray have the pieces to be successful, and it would be rather unfair for any aluminum bench pundit to say that they don’t. Retaining those pieces are critical—especially those pieces in what is shaping up to be an incredible Class of 2029, the centerpiece of this rebuild.
Let’s remind everyone, and I’m going to italicize this and embolden it for dramatic effect, there were 25 freshmen on this roster in 2025. During Fitchburg’s incredible run of form leading into the mid to late 2010’s, the Red and Gray boasted a freshman program where kids played against other 14- and 15-year-olds, all to teach them the system in which they would play for the next three years. That’s gone, and unless something outrageous happens, that’s not coming back any time soon. Those kids are going through a literal baptism of fire, and my hope, and the hope of the Faithful should be that those young men do not get discouraged and pick up and leave.
Those kids, of course, will get older. They’ll get bigger. They’ll get faster. They’ll get stronger. They’ll play for Brian Doherty and Vinny Arciprete or wrestle this winter, they’ll play other sports in the spring. They’ll hit the weight room as hard as they hit their schoolbooks—and hopefully their playbook, too.
So alas, the 2025 Football season for Fitchburg High School has come to a close. When history looks back upon the last three months, I hope it is done with a keen intellect and an appraising eye.
Onward and upward, Red and Gray. Onward and upward.
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