Small senior group leads Tigers into season
– The Breaux Bridge High School Tigers are looking to return to the playoffs this season after missing the postseason last year following a series of injuries that hampered team continuity.
The Tigers had gotten to the postseason every year since the early 2000s but suffered a couple of narrow early season losses and didn’t get on the positive side of the ledger until late in the season when BBHS won two of its last three games.
The Tigers also lost a big group of seniors from last year’s squad.
“We had 20 seniors leave and we only have nine seniors this year, but even out of some of the senior group and on the team, we have almost more new faces than we do returners,” second-year head coach Tyler Pierce said. “So the No. 1 thing is getting them to understand our standards, our culture.”
The defense will see continuity under coordinator Stephen Barrett with nine returning starters led by senior linebackers Baylon Champagne (5-foot-9, 205 pounds) and Shawnee Lewis (510, 175).
Three starters return on the defensive front — senior Christian Joseph (6-3, 240), junior Kenyan Demonter (5-11, 265) and sophomore Percy Moultrie (6-2, 245).
The offense is learning an entirely new system under coordinator Benjamin Gonzalez, who spent the past five years on the staff at Carencro High.
“He’s really taken ownership of the fact we have to be multiple within this veer-andshoot,” Pierce said. “If we can get under center and go in two-back and split-back veer it, we can do it. But if we want to go in the gun and be one-back and be multiple, we can do it.”
Senior Caynon Ardoin (5-11, 170) was recruited from the baseball team to play quarterback this season and has weapons to get the ball to including senior receiver Isaiah LeBlanc (6-3, 180), who was pressed into quarterbacking duties last season because of injuries. Champagne returns at running back as well.
“Can we get Isaiah and those weapons out there on the perimeter the ball?” Pierce said. “That’ll kind of make up where we’re at. For us it’s fun, though, because there’s so much youth on this team. But we had a lot of freshmen and sophomores that played last year due to the injuries we had, especially toward the end of the season.”
The Tigers were more of a spread offense last season but shifted to the veer as injuries mounted last year.
“One of the biggest things is (Gonzalez) saw our personnel and he saw Isaiah and he saw all these other ones, and so he just likes that we can be multiple, that we don’t have to just sit in spread, and we don’t have to just sit in two backs.”
The Tigers had five players who saw time at quarterback last year because of injuries. The veer is a quarterback friendly system that will allow BBHS to adjust if it needs to play a younger player because of injuries, Pierce said, rather than a spread that is tougher for a player to learn on the fly.
“I think overall we have a senior group returning from last year — Isaiah, Luke Landry, Christian Joseph, Baylon Champagne, Shawnee Lewis, even our kicker, Myles Renard, those are the only seniors that are coming up, but I’m just so proud of them for what they’ve been trying to establish,” Pierce said. “There’s not a whole lot of them, but they really have done a tremendous job of setting the standard of ‘that’s how we do this around here.’”
GETTING SET – Breaux Bridge High School head football coach Tyler Pierce talks to players at the end of a summer morning practice session earlier this year. Pierce is heading into his second season at the helm of the program and the Tigers are looking to reach the playoffs for the 23rd time in the past 24 years. (Chris Landry)
