Experience up front expected to help Bulldogs
Cecilia – The Cecilia High School football team saw nearly full participation all summer long, head coach Cody Champagne said this past week.
“We had a lot of kids that didn’t miss any days at all,” Champagne said. “I was pretty satisfied with the summer, moving forward.”
The Bulldogs have some new starters on both sides of the football and are working to get those players ready for their roles.
“You’ve got J.J. Davis, who’s been a threeyear starter, so you’re trying to replace him,” Champagne said. “He knew the ins and outs of the offense, for sure. We’re just making sure those guys are ready to roll come game 1, just making sure we understand what we’re doing.” There’s an experienced group of players up front, Champagne said, which is big for the team.
“We need to get better than we were the past couple of years in the trenches, on both sides of the football,” the coach said. “We have a couple of guys filling in spots in that group. I think we’re ahead of schedule there.”
The skill position group on offense includes All-American receiver Braylon Calais on one side and Ashton Ruffin on the other side, Deandre Briscoe in the backfield and Christian Guidry at the H back position.
“Obviously you have a new quarterback in Layne (Champagne), who’s more of a thrower than the past years with a running quarterback,” the coach said. “But he can pull it down and run if he needs to. He’s going to have to do that sometimes. Braylon’s going to have to play some quarterback. We’ve got the skill guys and we’ve got the Oline, so can we get better as the year goes on. That’s going to be the big question.”
The team is working on speeding all the skill position players up in what they do.
“We want to go fast,” Champagne said. “We want to make sure our one-word calls are fine, our shifts and motions are fine. We’re kind of working on that on the offensive side.”
Calais played receiver, quarterback and running back last year and was primarily a running back early in his career for the Bulldogs, but will primarily be a receiver this year, expected to be his position at LSU, where he has committed to sign a letter of intent. He’ll continue to play some quarterback, where he brings a dynamic run ability to the offense.
“With Braylon being a receiver, we’ve got to be a little creative with how we get him the football, not just throwing him the football,” Champagne said. “He’s going to play some quarterback still. You’ll see him in the backfield still. Those things are not going away.”
Having players like Christian Guidry and Nathan Thornton step up in their new roles — Thornton played defense last year — will be key. Chase Narcisse is expected to play a bigger role on defense. Kaden Journet is expected to step into his role at linebacker, and Brandon Lejeune played some on defense and is expected to be a primary player on defense.
“As long as those guys can step up and fill those roles, I think we’ll be fine,” Champagne said.
As with the offense, the defense is emphasizing lining up correctly and technique.
“We’ve got some experience up front, which is going to help,” Champagne said. “We’ve got some tough ballgames coming up. Your linebacking corps is new. Some of them played last year but not a lot. That’s the big question mark this year. You have your secondary which has been playing for a while.
“We’re going to have to stop people better than we did last year, for sure. But I think they can be pretty good, too.”
The team began practices at 8 a.m., so that the sessions were wrapping up by 11 a.m.
“We’re getting all our stuff pretty much before the heat,” Champagne said.
This week is Max Week, with a lift-a-thon at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“We’re just going to do power clean,” Champagne said. “Kids who can lift 225 (pounds), we give them a shirt that says ‘Club 225.” You join Club 225. They get excited about that.”
The week also includes concussion testing a the annual team photo day.
“I think they’re all ready for that week, just to get out here and have a little fun, max out (on lifting),” Champagne said.
The lift-a-thon will serve as a fundraiser for the Miles Perret Cancer Services center. People will be charged $5 admission for the lifta- thon with proceeds going to Miles Perret. Champagne’s wife was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer this summer, so it was something he and the senior class agreed would be a good beneficiary for the fundraiser.
“I think it’s going to be fun,” he said. “We’re going to invite the public. What I would like to do is have every sport do it and get the parents involved. But we’re going to start with football. The big thing is our community is great to us. We’re always fundraising for every sport. We’re going to fundraise (with the lift-a-thon), but all the money’s going to charity.”
The team has changed its conditioning program this year.
“We changed the workout,” Champagne said. “It was a little bit tougher.”
That includes introducing runs along the levee as a way to break the monotony and increase the fitness challenge.
“The last time we went to the levee, it was 10 o’clock and they still weren’t tired,” Champagne said.
The coaches also added some auxiliary work in between big lifts this year. That includes more core work to improve conditioning for the back and hips.
“The kids are having fun,” Champagne said. “Again, the biggest question is, how do we handle adversity. I’ve been saying that to the kids. When the sun’s shining and everything’s going well, we’re pretty good. But we’ve got to handle adversity at some point. How we handle it is going to determine how our season goes. And how we learn from it, too. I think once we figure that out we’re going to be pretty good, as long as everyone stays pretty healthy.”
Making another run in the playoffs — the Bulldogs have reached at least the quarterfinals in four of the past five seasons, including two straight trips to the championship game in 2023 and 2024.
“You need luck,” Champagne said. “You need everybody to be healthy. I think we had that up until the quarterfinals where (quarterback Collin) Dore got hurt. That kind of limited us in what we were doing. Even in ’23, going into the state finals, our quarterback and running back got hurt in the semifinals. In ’24 all our kids had the flu but we pushed through. My nephew, who’s going to be the quarterback, was a freshman. He ran scout offense that whole week the week of the Superdome (trip).”
Staying healthy and showing growth will help the team improve and have a shot at making another playoff run, he said.
“Can we grow like we did last year?” Champagne said. “It’s obvious we grew from the start to the finish.”
