By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — If you blink, you may miss the three weeks allotted for spring practice in Louisiana high school football.
“It does go by fast,” Ruston High head coach Jerrod Baugh said. “And you know, doing it here at the very end of school, the kids are ready to get out, the coaches are ready to get out of school — it’s really difficult to dig in for one last push. There’s so many things here at the end of school that it’s hard to stay focused — and that’s actually a good thing. Coaches and kids alike have to try to figure out how to get out here and get things done.”
Starting back on Monday, April 28, the Bearcats and the coaching staff have run three weeks of physical practices with a roster that has had a hefty churn — losing over a dozen starters on both sides of the ball to graduation.
And tonight, they’ll have a chance to clash pads with a different team — Captain Shreve at Lee Hedges Stadium in Shreveport at 6 p.m. For Baugh and the Bearcats, it’s less about stats and scoring and much more about situations and players knowing where to be and to step up.
“It will be a lot of the same things that we grind in our practices,” Baugh said. “How do we handle different situations in a game? Where do we need to work more going into next year? Player by player, we’re going to evaluate how their growth has been from the start of spring to here. And we’ll figure out who our Junior Varsity guys are and what our freshmen will be able to do. A lot of guys are majorly confused right now about what they’re supposed to do, so it will be a good opportunity to get some video on those guys to see where everybody stacks up. So this will be no different than what we’ve had practice by practice.”
The scrimmage will be a similar format to how most Bearcat spring and summer scrimmages go: there will be two rounds of a controlled portion on both offense and defense for the first, second and third groups between the ‘Cats and the Gators. Due to a lack of freshmen football players for Captain Shreve, Ruston’s freshmen will have two rounds of playing each other.
Following that, there will be two 12-minute halves of live football with a running clock.
“I’ve been pleased so far with what we’ve gotten out of spring practice leading into this game,” Baugh said in conclusion. “It’s one thing to go out there and do things against your teammates — somebody you’re comfortable hitting on. But it’ll be interested to see how some of the newer guys and less experienced guys do against somebody else and how nervous they’ll be. Hopefully, we’ll see some guys find another level of juice tonight against another team.”
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