OPELOUSAS – The St. Landry Parish jamboree is holding its 21st annual jamboree and Eunice head coach Paul Trosclair has been a part of the games since its inception.
Eunice, Northwest and Port Barre are in District 5-3A, but will not face each other in the jamboree.
Eunice opens the regular season against Opelousas High, so Beau Chene and North Central were the only options for the Bobcats.
Eunice will take on North Central 6 p.m. Friday in the opening game held at Donald Gardner Stadium in Opelousas.
North Central’s Jacobi Thierry is in sixth season with the Hurricanes and won the jamboree crying towel.
The Hurricanes went 1-10 last year and he said he was concerned about the depth and the inexperience of his young players.
Thierry joked that the game official will be instructed to “keep the clock running even if we go out of bounds.”
North Central opens the regular season at Gueydan.
Trosclair is entering his 22nd year as the Bobcat head coach and he said his team is ready for the season.
Eunice finished 5-6 last season and the Bobcat coach joked that the crying towel should be awarded at the end of the season.
“After last season and the postseason, we had our crying towel,” he said.
“We didn’t know we would have two semifinal teams, two quarter-final teams and two second-round teams on our schedule but I found out the hard way.
“But that is football and we show up and play with what we have.”
Troslcair said he is excited about this year’s team.
“If things don’t go our way we aren’t going to quit,” he said. “We are going to keep fighting.”
Eunice will split its squad between the parish jamboree and the Joe Nagata Memorial Jamboree.
Beau Chene and Port Barre will square off at 7:15 p.m.
Richard Morales enters his first season at Beau Chene and said the Gators will return to their home field for the first time since the 2016 flood.
“I’m just trying to continue the hard work that was put in by the teams before us,” he said. “We are ready to get the season started.”
Port Barre went 0-10 in Craig Stevens’ first season and he is hopeful the Red Devils will be improved in 2018.
“We’re definitely goingto be a better football team,” he said. “I’m not sure how that will relate to wins and losses.”
Stevens said his team has been practicing hard and gving great effort.
We have players who are enthusiastic and we are hoping to get this program going in the right direction.”
Opelousas High and Northwest will conclude the jamboree at 8:45 p.m.
Doug Guillory entering his second season at Opelousas High after the Tigers went 5-5 last year.
“We had a solid season last year as we began to build a foundation and we have a bunch of guys returning on both sides of the ball.
“We are looking forward to playing a good program in Northwest and hoping that good competition will help us get better for when we open the season against Eunice High.”
Chris Edwards is entering his fourth season as Northwest’s head coach after leading the Raiders to three straight Class 3-A state quarterfinal appearances.
“We’ve been on a roll the past few years,” Edwards said of his Raiders.
“We let some of those (regular season) games last season sort of get away from us – especially the Church Point game (a 34-32 loss).”
Edward said he felt Northwest will be a solid team again with 85 playes on the roster.
“We are ready for to play some football.”