A Tiger at Heart: Greg Boyne’s Return and Hahnville’s Resurgence

by: Lori Lyons // GeauxPreps.com Contributor

For more than 20 years, Greg Boyne was considered to be one of the factors behind the success of the Destrehan High School football team.

As the Wildcats’ offensive coordinator for the past 12 seasons, it was Boyne who helped lead Destrehan to three state championships and three runner-up finishes. 

So, it was easy for football fans to forget that Boyne is really a Hahnville Tiger at heart, A proud 1990 graduate of the school, he showed his true colors when he was named as the Tiger’s new head football in January of this year. It’s the first head coaching job for Boyne, a former high school basketball player who never played varsity football and started as a middle school basketball and football coach.

“Besides the football part, the hardest part is probably deciding what to eat for the pre-game meal,” Boyne said. “You end up with a hundred different opinions. You wouldn’t think a hundred boys would be so picky.”

And now that Boyne has the Tigers making a lot of noise with a 5-1 record and a perfect 4-0 in District 8-5A, he may just be showing that he was the wizard behind the curtain all along. Hahnville was 3-6 in 2023 without a playoff trip. 

So far Hahnville has knocked off Terrebonne (51-32), Bourgeois (42-0), Thibodaux (45-21), and Central Lafourche (49-0), with East St. John up this week and his former team, Destrehan, coming up next week. Along with a pre-district win over Booker T. Washington (42-6) in the season-opener, the Tigers’ lone loss was to E.D. White, 21-18, the week after Hurricane Francine wiped out nearly everybody’s schedule.

“Good scheduling,” Boyne joked when asked what is the secret to his rookie-year success. “That plays a big part in it, of course.”

Boyne also said he went back to some of the basics. 

“One of the first things I thought when I got here was, ‘We’ve got to get bigger,’” Boyne said. “We needed to amp up the intensity up in the weight room. I think it gives kids confidence too when they see their numbers going up in the weight room.”

Then he went old school with his football plan – run the ball and play defense. 

“I got a bad rap as a throw-it-around guy (at Destrehan), he said. “But I’m kind of old school. I mean we will throw, but our approach is we want to run the football. We don’t hide it. These days we’re probably a higher percentage than most, probably 65 percent run.”

Luckily, the Tigers have a guy who can do that in 5-foot-10, 200-pound senior running back Calvin “C.J.” Smith, already a Southeastern Louisiana commit with some other offers still on the table. Smith rushed for 169 yards on 11 carries against Bourgeois and put up 188 yards and five touchdowns in a head-turning win over Terrebonne.  Smith had two scores against Central Lafourche last week.

“He’s our main guy,” Boyne said. “And we’ve got a couple of other pieces around him.”

Patrick Jackson, Jha’man Preston, and Kobe Louis all scored touchdowns last week. The offense is led by sophomore Landon Teague, who won the job after a battle throughout the spring and summer and has zero turnovers through six games. 

Smith said he remembers going to Hahnville football games when he was a youngster and watching the Tigers dominate opponents. He’s happy that his team is doing that again.

“We’re trying to bring back that culture,” he said. “It feels good to win. I thought it would take some time because most of our defense graduated and we had a lot of young guys to bring up. We barely have any seniors on the defense. But really, the defense is giving us good field position. All our scoring on offense is coming from how good our defense is.”

Boyne said the defense is a young group but that there are 10 to 15 guys who rotate in and out. Last week Ryan Simmons stepped up on defense, returning an interception for one touchdown and a 44-yard fumble recovery for another. 

While his focus is on East St. John this week, Boyne can’t help but be just a little excited for Nov. 1 when he takes his new team back across the river to Destrehan, which is going into its game this week against Central Lafourche with a record of 5-3, 3-1. Hahnville has not had a win over Destrehan since 2017.

“It sounds like a cliché,” Boyne said. “But I’m going to try to keep it as close as I can to just another game. I would want to win it just as much if I was on the other side playing Hahnville. That’s going to be my approach. It’s the next game. But it’s not just another game. It’s hard to hide it when you get there and there’s a couple thousand people there and it’s 5 ‘o’clock. The kids, all of them are going to be a little more hyped up. I know this.  In the, I guess, 24 games I’ve coached in that series, the team that makes the fewest mistakes is going to win it.”