This story was originally published on October 19, 2023.
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By Kyle Roberts
“You’re kidding? I thought he was from Texas!”
That, or something like it, is the most common response I get when I tell people that Ruston High head football coach Jerrod Baugh is a 1995 graduate of West Ouachita High School, located south of Calhoun in the small community of Cadeville.
Take Exit 103 on I-20 and find your way south for about 10 minutes and you’ll eventually come to a large school, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
But it was at this school that Baugh, now one of the top high school football coaches in Louisiana, started his love for, you guessed it … basketball.
“My dad was a basketball coach in Eros, when there was still a school there,” Baugh said of his father Roy. “He taught math and coached girls’ basketball for two or three years, and then got into the computer business as a data processor writing computer programs.”
Coaching did not stop for the family, as Baugh’s mother Nova went back to school to finish her college degree once all of the sons were at the age to go to school.
“Then my mother coached girls’ basketball and taught language arts at Ouachita Junior High before getting hired at Calhoun, where she coached until she retired,” Baugh said.
Baugh’s love of basketball did indeed begin to shift to where he has had most of his success: on the football field. In junior high in Calhoun, he began playing contact football and started as a tight end before moving to quarterback.
At the time, West Ouachita High School was in the middle of a tectonic shift for a small program in the early 90’s: the Chiefs had moved from 2A to 4A due to student enrollment, which was a sharp jump in the level of competition for a team that appeared on the rise in 2A with a talented junior high team coming in from Calhoun Middle.
“We had several guys that you could still hold back in the eighth grade, and we were really good in junior high,” Baugh said. “We played schools like Ouachita and Ruston, and we were undefeated coming through eighth grade. And we had a good group of guys coming in behind them, as well.”
Baugh suited up for the Chiefs as a freshman in 1992, playing safety and backup quarterback.
As fate would have it, a legend in North Louisiana took over the helm of the Chiefs program leading into his sophomore season: Pat Collins, I-AA national championship winning head coach at Northeast Louisiana University (now ULM) and head coach at Ouachita, Longview, and of course, West Ouachita.
And in no time, Collins was impressed with Baugh’s analytical mind and work ethic, keeping him one step ahead of the competition in whatever role he served.
“He had a real toughness,” Collins said. “And he was ready to give credit to those who deserved it and would do everything he could to try to make things better for everybody. He and I both have our degrees in math, so maybe that’s one reason we hit it off.
“But I always felt that Jerrod was going to be in 100 percent at whatever he does. And that impressed me.”
After not making the postseason his sophomore season under Collins, Baugh would lead West Ouachita into the playoffs both his junior and senior seasons as quarterback, running an I-formation offense that is similar to what Ruston High runs today.
“We were probably 35 percent of the time throwing the football,” Baugh said. “We had a really good running back and did a lot of play action passing that made it easier on me. Of course, I’m not the tallest guy, so we would sprint out a bunch and throw the ball. We didn’t have any big, tall receivers, but we had a couple of really good receivers, and I thought we were getting pretty good.”
Under Collins’ tutelage, Baugh began to shift away from basketball and started to appreciate the strategic pieces of football. From there, a bond between the two led Baugh from Calhoun to Ouachita to Longview, Texas, all with Collins primarily as the head coach.
But West Ouachita holds a special place in Baugh’s heart, in large part due to the family legacy that he, along with his two brothers Dean and Duston, have left as Chiefs on the gridiron.
“I always take a look at their roster, see the last names and wonder if I played with some of their dads,” Baugh said. “It’s neat to see. West Ouachita gets a bad rep sometimes for not being able to get things going. I think (head coach Mike) Rainwater is doing a great job. I think the injuries they’ve taken in some important spots has been detrimental. But one thing you’ll see on video is that those kids always play very hard.”
And now Baugh’s nephew Harper, Duston’s son, will be suited up on the opposing sideline, wearing No. 57 as an offensive lineman and linebacker. Talking about Harper and his family stirs emotion within Baugh that is evident when he shares their bond.
“I got really close to my nephews when they were younger,” Baugh said of Duston’s sons. “I think Harper knows that at the end of the day, I like to win. We used to have game nights, and it didn’t matter what kind of game we played. They were going to have to catch it just like everybody else.
“I fully plan to go out there and do my best to win, and Harper knows that. We’re all very competitive. That’s the way we grew up; we were pretty sore losers if it didn’t go our way amongst ourselves.”
Ruston and West Ouachita will play Friday night at Red Sims stadium for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
