By Kyle Roberts
The setup is eerily similar to last season: a dominant Ruston Bearcat team on an eight-game winning streak after losing the season opener in heartbreaking fashion. An outright district title on the line. A chance to clinch the one-seed overall in the Power Rankings thanks in great part to an incredibly hefty ask for a non-district schedule.
All that was standing in the way in 2021 was the West Monroe Rebels, who would come to James Field at “Hoss” Garrett Stadium for the final regular season game. Unfortunately, we all remember how that ended.
Three hundred, sixty-four days have passed. Multiple key position players and contributors were on the roster last season and have returned for this showdown, which should prove electrifying from the first gun to the final whistle. And on paper, it’s the exact same setup as last season with the same stakes at play that will be determined by the outcome of tonight’s ballgame.
Of course, while we all are thinking about “The Streak” and asking “Is this the year?”, the approach for the 2022 Ruston Football program is simple: tune out the distractions and focus on the football game ahead.
“This will give us an opportunity to see where we are heading into the playoffs,” Ruston head coach Jerrod Baugh said. “(West Monroe’s) coaches have done a great job of getting them to where they need to be at this point in the season. I think we’ve had a pretty good week of preparation; that’s how we look at it.”
Ruston has dominated its way through district play over the last four weeks; Alexandria Senior High was the only opponent that kept a remotely close game after two quarters back in Week 6. West Monroe has also gone undefeated through district play to this point, most recently beating ASH in Rebel Stadium 24-13 in Week 9. On the same night, Ruston traveled to the Lions’ Den and bested Ouachita in a blowout that started with a safety and ended with a punt return for a touchdown. The Bearcats would beat the Lions handily by a final score of 47-13.
Something worth mentioning, and only for the sake of this article, is that these two teams have already seen each other before in the preseason at the 2022 Bayou Jamb at Joe Aillet Stadium on the campus of Louisiana Tech. While Ruston won that contest 27-6, you’ll certainly be encouraged to throw that fact away when considering tonight’s matchup, as over the course of this season, both teams have only significantly improved as the year has gone on.
“West Monroe has improved a bunch, and I feel like we have, too, since the Jamboree,” Baugh said. “Their coaches have done a really good job of tinkering with things they need to do offensively, defensively, and with special teams. It’s a completely different football team from what we saw in the preseason.”
The winner this year will be the outright District 2-5A champion, and if it’s the Bearcats on the winning side, a likely coveted No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the playoffs.
Yes, it’s been 32 years. Yes, this Ruston community would love nothing more than to see the streak come to an end. Yes, we’d all love to stop asking the question “Is this the year?”
It truly has to end at some point, as all things do. Perhaps the best way for it to come to an end will be for the Bearcats to approach this the same way they’ve approached the other high quality teams they’ve seen so far: just go play football the way they know how to play. Let the rest take care of itself.
“As much as the community looks at this ballgame, for us, it really is just another opportunity for us to get better as a football team,” Baugh said. “This group does a really job of focusing on the things that matter for the most part. I don’t know think that they read into that; they hear about it a lot, but we don’t talk about that in the building. It’s one of those things that you have to filter out; you don’t want to be rude to anybody, but you still have to stay focused on the things you can take care of and what you can control.”
Kickoff between Ruston and West Monroe is set for 7 p.m. and can be heard live on Z107.5 FM and streamed on BearcatNationNetwork.com.
