Two years ago, Edwin Herard was a do-it-all athlete for the Eupora High School football team.
He starred on both sides of the ball and every Friday night, the other team felt every bit of his effort as did his teammates and coaches. Herard wrecked opposing defenses for 2,716 yards rushing and 1,795 passing with 59 touchdowns as a quarterback.
At linebacker, he wrecked opposing offenses with 226 tackles in four seasons. All of that led to an opportunity in college football with Holmes Community College where he got to focus on the defensive side alone for once.
“I really enjoyed that because it gives you one position you can focus on and put all your time in it,” Herard said. “In college sports, everybody is throwing the ball. You don’t see that from 3A down to 1A so I improved the most on my coverage and knowing my responsibilities.
“I went into it not knowing what to expect. You hear that JUCO is one of the roughest leagues there is because you play with D-1 athletes, but you don’t have the facilities they have. It ended up being good to me.”
The season was actually really good to Herard and he was good for the Bulldogs. Midway through the season, the player ahead of him at linebacker went down with an injury and Herard was ready to step in. He played in all nine games starting for most of the year.
He made 37 tackles on the year with a tackle for loss and he helped his team to a 4-2 conference record which was the best such mark since 2016 at Holmes. The big moments of the year were wins over Northwest and East Mississippi and Herard played a part in it even breaking his nose on the first play of the EMCC win and playing through it.
He took a lot from those games as well as going up against the eventual National Champions of Gulf Coast.
“If you want to be a great athlete, you have to play against great athletes,” Herard said. “There’s countless D-1 athletes playing for Gulf Coast and EMCC. I played linebacker and seeing how big those linemen were was unbelievable. I had to adjust to the size big time.”
Now that one year is down in Goodman, it’s time for a sophomore season for Herard. He’s been going through offseason workouts on his own at home in Webster county along with his school work to finish out his freshman year.
The Bulldogs will be under new management this year as well as offensive coordinator Raymond Gross takes over the program. Herard is expecting big things.
“My expectations are to grow off of last year. We beat East Mississippi and Northwest in the same year and I don’t know how long it’s been since we’ve done that,” Herard said. “We’ve got a new head coach and I really like him so we need to grow off of all of that and be more consistent. If you can be consistent you can win games.”
Despite moving on to bigger things in college football, Herard hasn’t forgotten where he came from. There’s a long line of Herard’s that have starred for the Eagles of Eupora. It’s a place that Herard calls home and gives the most credit to his success.
“I loved Eupora football. Football in Mississippi, there’s nothing like it,” Herard said. “All of the men in my family have played there and you’re expected to do it and be good at it. I thrived off of that.”
