By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — Regardless of the outcome in Saturday’s championship game, this will be the final game of the 2024 season for the Ruston High School Bearcats (11-2).
Gathered Thursday before lunch for the last time in pads before the Super Dome showdown with Central High School from Baton Rouge, Ruston Head Coach Jerrod Baugh shared that one of the biggest hurdles for this week has been keeping the kids laser-focused on the task at hand and avoid the distractions that naturally come with playing for a state championship.
Or worse: underestimating their opponent.
That commitment to practicing hard throughout the week and making the right preparations outside of just game day is the standard of excellence Baugh holds his players to, and while he knows not every practice is going to be perfect, he also knows what it takes to win a championship.
“I was a little disappointed about practice today,” Baugh said. “Maybe my expectations were too high. It just seemed like we just came out here and checked boxes. Look, I get it — they’re high school kids. There’s a lot of things going on. My thing is, they’re probably listening to too many people outside of here telling them they’ve already won. Someone has gotten the idea that Central is not any good, and I sure don’t know where that idea is coming from. They’re going to be ready to play. Their coach (David Simoneaux) has been in state championships, and he knows how to get his teams ready.
“We’ve got to just finish the week the way we know how to do, and our walkthrough on Saturday needs to be really good. We’re getting ready to play a good football team, and I’m not going to let us ignore them.”
After one final walkthrough today at Hoss Garrett Stadium, the team will be leaving tomorrow morning for New Orleans at 5:45 a.m., and community members are invited to come see the team off.
From there, the Bearcats will conduct a walkthrough indoors at Elite Training Academy in Baton Rouge before getting to the Super Dome. The original plan was to conduct the walkthrough at Southeastern University in Hammond, La., but the weather forecast calls for rain on Saturday.
And to harken back to the early days of the 2024 schedule, this is why Baugh wanted to play a couple Saturday games at neutral sites in Texas.
“As many things as you can do to put kids in a position to something they’ll face similarly down the road, it makes their comfort level that much better,” Baugh said. “They’ve already been in (a Saturday game) routine a couple of times. And they’ve already been in a routine where it’s an early morning, get on the bus, make the trip to play in an afternoon game. Everybody operates a little bit better when you’re comfortable with the situation that’s out there in front of you.”
Should Ruston beat Central, it would be the first time in school history that the Bearcats would be back-to-back state champions. In fact, the 2023 team was the first in school history to even get back to the Super Dome for two consecutive years.
The Bearcat Nation Network will not be able to stream a video of the game due to licensing restrictions — however, the home radio broadcast will be on Q94.1 FM. The audio can also be streamed at KRLQFM.com.
Bearcat fans traveling to New Orleans are invited to a pregame community tailgate Saturday, Dec. 14, from 12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. sponsored by Origin Bank to be held at the Opening Act at Champions Square by the Super Dome.
Ticket information can be found at this link.
The Super Dome has a clear bag policy. Please review it here.
