By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — For eight straight seasons, the Ruston High Bearcats will have played in the quarterfinals of the playoffs, which (outside of the 2020 COVID season) has been the Friday right after Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t always the norm — in fact, Ruston High Head Coach Jerrod Baugh saw early in his tenure that for the Bearcat football program to take the next step, playing over Thanksgiving break would have to become an expectation, not just a pleasant surprise.
“Whenever we first started going to the third round, it was a struggle,” Baugh said. “ We had a lot of kids that planned on going to the Bayou Classic, or they were going out of town for Thanksgiving. And so I struggled with trying to be thoughtful of people’s plans, even though I really wanted everybody to always make plans that we were we were going to be playing on Thanksgiving. And now, I think that everybody understands that we’ve been doing that so long now that I think people just know that they need to plan on our son not being able to be with us wherever it is or we’re going to host Thanksgiving at our place or whatever all of the circumstances are.
“And that’s a good thing. So I think our kids have grown accustomed to what it looks like. They know what the routines are — that we’ll have morning practices on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and evening practice, and a pep rally on Thursday, and come in about midday on Friday.”
Ruston High advanced to the quarters yet again after defeating No. 16 Westgate this past Friday 52-13 in a rematch from a much closer game in 2023. Now, it’s a rematch from last season as No. 8 Southside comes to town following Ruston’s victory in last year’s quarters by a final score of 49-7. The Bearcats combined great clock management with a stingy defense and power running game to put the Tigers away early and get the win.
“I would probably say that it would have been a complete ball game by executing in all three phases, on offense defense and special teams,” Buagh said. “Obviously, that was a really good time to do that because Westgate is a really good football team. I thought the kids did a really good job.”
Looking to this week, Baugh is expecting a much more mature Shark team to come to Hoss Garrett Stadium for this matchup compared to last year.
“They’re definitely more experienced,” Baugh said. “Their quarterback comes back and now he’s got another year under his belt. And then that offense that they run — he’s got to check things at the line of scrimmage. He does a good job reading the option stuff that they ask him to read. He’s good with the football in his hands. A lot of people think if you see these flex bone option teams, then it’s three yards in a cloud of dust, but they’re averaging 50-plus points a game. And that’s because the quarterback is doing a really good job of getting them in the right place and getting the ball to who it’s supposed to go to. And the guys that he’s getting it to, or it’s him, are making some big time plays.
“They kind of do some unorthodox things defensively at times. So we’re going to have to make sure offensive line wise in the running game that we’re communicating what it is that we see. But (Head Coach Jess) Curtis does a really good job with what he does — obviously, all the state championships he won at Many, this isn’t new to him. And so I think he’s some of what he’s been able to do in his career, he’s passing that along to some of the kids and they’re not going to come here and be overwhelmed. They’ll have a chip on their shoulder from how the game went last year. Our kids need to be ready, ready for that.”
Healthwise, the Bearcats are expecting star defensive tackle Ra’Keem Potts to be available after suffering an ankle injury last Friday night.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on Q94.1 FM and streamed live on BearcatNationNetwork.com.
