Prescott football’s schedule has been no joke thus far. The Cardinals lost 43-12 to a Prairie du Chien team that shared the Southwest Wisconsin Conference title a year ago, 57-14 to a Northwestern team that made the State Championship game a year ago and is a dominant 3-0 at the moment and, most recently, 56-12 to Baldwin-Woodville, a State Semi-finalist a year ago. All three of those games were made even tougher because they were road games.

The Cardinals looked up to the task at times against Baldwin-Woodville, coming up with some defensive stops. Unfortunately for Prescott, an errant pitch led to a scoop and score to open the scoring for the Blackhawks in the first quarter. Baldwin-Woodville’s defense scored on another fumble return in the second half when many on the field stopped playing because they thought the runner was ruled down.

“We are just trying to find our way a little bit,” Prescott Coach Jordan Hansen said. “We’ve done some good things, but we turn the ball over a ton, so clean up a lot of the little things. When you play great teams, you get exposed in your weak spots, and we’re able to see where we need to work.”

Hansen said there have been a lot of positives along the way as well. The team has shown the ability to move the ball; the consistency is what needs to be dialed up. He expects his Cardinals to string together some wins in the final six games of the regular season if they can find that consistency.

“We just have to have that energy for four quarters,” Hansen said. “This team is going to continue to get better and better every week.”

Prescott now hosts Ellsworth for the Cardinals’ first home game of the season. Both teams are 0-3, searching for their first wins after tough non-conference slates. On the bright side for both teams, they have only played a single conference game thus far, so a rivalry win could be all it takes to get right back into the playoff picture. Quarterback Reese Stanton and running back Charlie Rohl have led the run game in the early going, and they have given defenses a few different looks to throw them off. The Prescott defense has also made some adjustments from week-to-week.

“It’s been a really good football game. Just in tradition of years passed, it’s going to be a tough game no matter how good or how bad either one is. We’re going to expect a dog fight,” Hansen said. “That’s what you want when you get the Cards and the Panthers together.”