Fitting Tribute: Broadmoor High Renaming Football Stadium in Honor of Coach Rusty Price

by: William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor

The last time former Broadmoor quarterback Reggie Hayes could recall seeing his former football coach Rusty Price, 77, moved to tears was 34 years ago after the Buccaneers’ 37-22 loss to Hahnville in the Class 4A state championship game.

Hayes was on hand in the Superdome in December of 1992 to cheer on his former team and coach. The
Buccaneers led by three points at halftime, trailed by a point midway through the third quarter before the Tigers scored the next two touchdowns to seal the victory.

It was Broadmoor’s first trip to a state final since winning the 1966 state title and Price, the school’s head coach since 1985, shared in the team’s disappointment in a battle of 14-0 teams.

Fast-forward 34 years and Hayes plans to be in attendance Friday when Broadmoor High honors Price for his 45-year coaching career, officially renaming the football stadium Rusty Price Stadium during a ceremony at halftime of the season opener with Ellender.

“He’ll be touched, but I don’t think he’ll show it,” Hayes said. “He’ll be appreciative.”

Price’ association with the school extends 51 years, combining his coaching career with the six years he
attended Broadmoor High in Baton Rouge since the seventh grade. After proudly serving in the Marine Corps, he returned to Southeastern Louisiana and following a knee injury that derailed an opportunity to play football, he went onto a Hall of Fame career in track and field career and was a member of the Lions national championship team in 1975.

Price was Broadmoor’s cross-country coach and assistant football coach for nine years before taking over as head football coach in 1985, embarking on a 28-year stay in that capacity until health related-issues pushed him away, resulting in co-head coaching duties and eventually solely serving as athletic director until 2013.

“It’s been a home away from home,” Price said of Broadmoor. “I was fortunate in my early years to have
tremendous coaching staffs that really carried me and did a lot of the work. We had a group of young kids that believed in what we were doing. We were successful for a number of years. We had good and bad years. The thing I miss the most is the camaraderie with the players and coaches.”

Broadmoor principal Robert Wells, now in his fourth year at the school, said the discussion of honoring Price began three years ago upon his arrival. He said the school wanted to reconnect with its alumni, and to try and honor their previous contributions and achievements to the school.

He said Price’s name surfaced at the top of such a list and grew in strength, especially from some of his former players. A selection committee later cast an affirmative vote for Price and the school announced plans in March to honor the school’s most successful coach in appropriate fashion.

“He did 45 years and that’s a long time to be working with kids,” Wells said. “He did some great things over that time. You make a few mistakes, but at the end of the day 45 years of service, that’s a long time. We felt it was a worthy manner to honor everything that he did. He coached a lot of kids.

“He had a lot of early mornings and had some late nights for 45 years coming to Broadmoor,” Wells said. “That type of service warrants equitable recognition. We wanted to try and do something to honor his legacy, his contributions to the school, and the kids that came into the Broadmoor High community. We think it’s going to be an eventful night.”

Broadmoor will become the first public school in East Baton Rouge Parish to rename its football stadium in honor of a former coach. Glen Oaks’ fieldhouse is renamed for former football coach Nolan Gill and Glen Oaks’ gymnasium is named for the boys’ basketball coach Harvey Adger, a friend of Price.

“I’m really blessed that some of the older players got it started,” Price said. “It’s an honor, there’s no doubt about that. It’s something I’m very proud of.”

Broadmoor’s Rise to State Prominence

Veteran football coach Alan Brown twice joined Price’s staff for a total of 19 years as defensive coordinator, beginning in 1987.

“He’s very big on discipline,” Brown said of Price. “That was one of his mainstays. That’s why they (players) revere him so much because they know where he stands.

After an initial 1-9 season, Price said he and his assistant coach Carl DiJohn went to TCU where then head coach Jim Wacker had installed a triple-option veer offense, a scheme they returned to Baton Rouge where convinced would be a perfect marriage for their personnel
and complement what Brown was doing on defense.

The Buccaneers were not blessed with a large number of players, relying on Price’s ability to condition them for the long haul of a physical football game.

“When I came on board, we were mighty thin in personnel,” Brown said of a roster of 21 players. “They
had to go both ways. He (Price) made sure if they were willing to commit, he was going to train them to be able to play the whole 48 minutes. He was very strong with being in physical shape and being an athlete. He would train to develop the kids, not sport specific, and to be a better athlete.”

Brown said it wasn’t Price’s nature to concern himself with what he didn’t have, and instead focused on making what he had the most cohesive and conditioned team possible.

“He could have cried and said he didn’t have any numbers, but that’s not Rusty,” Brown said. “That’s goingback to his Marine Corps background. He’s going to make the best of the situation at the time. That’s what we did and tried to put them in the best situations for them to be successful. We did a lot of homework to get those kids prepared. The first couple of years were rough, but after that, I think we got it rolling pretty good.”

Broadmoor advanced to the Class 3A state semifinals with a memorable 22-7 victory over nationally ranked John Curtis, the reigning two-time state champions.

Hayes, who played collegiately at UL-Lafayette, believed the Buccaneers would win the game despite the pregame sight of Curtis’ mammoth offensive linemen.

“We dressed 35-40 players that year and probably played 25 during the season,” he said. “We had about six guys going both ways that never came off the field. We were very strong and with a good weight program. We worked out every day. We were usually smaller than any team we played. Curtis was ranked fifth in the country and hadn’t lost in two years. It was so motivating to see them come to our field.

“When I walked on the field, I thought all of Curtis’ team was already on the field already and thought we could play with them, but it was just the specialists,” Hayes said. “Then when we were stretching and I looked at coach (J.T.) Curtis and the offensive linemen walking on the side of the track and I said, oh my God, look at that. They looked like NFL players, but I promised we were going to whoop their butts that night. They weren’t going to leave with a victory.”

Brown admitted being somewhat concerned once Curtis arrived for the game, but never doubted his team’s determination.

“They were so big getting off the bus,” he said. “I just prayed that we didn’t get anyone taken to the hospital. They were huge, but our kids got after it.”

Hayes believed the stunning victory signaled Broadmoor’s arrival on the statewide scene. As usual, he
was a magician in the team’s veer and so adept at ball handling leading the team’s offense, and defensive

lineman Wynorski English’s late interception of a pitch helped to seal the victory, Brown said.

The Bucs lost to Crowley, 22-7, in the following week’s semifinal. “Beating Curtis put us on the map,” Hayes said. “Just showing the resilience that we had. It was so joyful to do that. They were so much bigger than us. You could tell the difference in the third and fourth quarters when the game was about to turn. It was probably tight in the first half. As you saw us running on and off the field, you saw the bodies of other teams change a bit. We dug deeper and took over the game.”

Broadmoor’s run during the early 1990s continued in ’91 when the Bucs topped mighty Curtis, 17-12, in the Class 4A state quarterfinals before being tripped up again in the semifinals by Crowley, 20-7.

A year later, the Buccaneers went undefeated with Keith Foster at quarterback, defeating Salmen 28-21 in the semifinals to advance to the state title game against Hahnville for the first time since 1966.

Price said such moments were only possible with a strong belief system amongst each player.

“One of the things we put on the kids was to make a memory and that was something we were successful at,” Price said. “A lot of times a memory isn’t always what you think it was. After talking to a of former players, the things they remember were completely different from what I remember. But yet we made a memory.”

Foster sped 65 yards for an opening touchdown and Broadmoor led 16-6 at halftime on Foster’s 1-yard sneak against Hahnville.

“Keith didn’t have a fumble or throw an interception all year,” Price said. “That was the key to our success.”

Montrell Burrell’s TD run got the Bucs to within 23-22 at the 6:18 mark of the third quarter when Hahnville put the game out of reach, taking advantage of a late fumble recovery and the running of the game’s outstanding player Horace Raymond, who totaled three touchdowns, put the game out of reach.

Developing Character Through Hard Work

Price attended Southeastern on a GI bill that covered the
cost of education for veterans. Initially, he was set to join the football team until a knee injury prevented him from moving forward.

The former high jumper and hurdler in high school was assisting some of Southeastern’s discus throwers at practice, capturing their attention with his retrieval and form he showed in returning the discus back to them.

Price eventually found himself a member of the team where he starred in both the discus and hammer throw, finishing his career as the record holder for the school and conference in both events. He won the NAIA national championship in the hammer throw in 1975 and helped the Lions to a national title that year.

He was selected to SLU’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1993, having earned NAIA All-America honors.

The notoriety of such exploits served as a catalyst in getting him his first interview at Broadmoor, Price said.

“I was going to take a different job until Bobby Olah, who was a friend that I did my student teaching with, influenced me to search around,” he said. “We had just won the national championship in track at Southeastern and my name had been the paper because of that. The principal said he was familiar with me from being in the paper and winning the national championship, and that gave me an advantage.”

Price was hired to coach Broadmoor’s cross-country team. It wasn’t necessarily a strength of his at the time and Catholic High coach Pete Boudreaux, who coached for 57 years, rose to fame coaching the sport along with track, and became a valuable tutor for Price in cross country.

“Pete Boudreaux took me under his wing,” Price said. “I didn’t know a thing about cross country. He was the first person to offer any help. He was a first-class guy that I owe a lot of success to because of his mentorship. You can’t brag about how long you’ve been somewhere when you were around him.”

The seeds of Price’s disciplined approach to coaching were sewn during his formative years with cross-country and nine seasons as a football assistant.

When he became the school’s head coach in ’85, developing tough-minded individuals became prevalent
and through constant repetition. The Bucs became known for their ability to execute at a high level and not hurt themselves with turnovers.

“Our values all meshed together, it was really a good scenario,” said Brown, who coached with Price from
1987-97 and returned for a second tenure 1994-2012 before retiring in the spring of ’13. “He demanded you do the right thing. In doing so, if you continued to mess it up or broke one of the severe rules, that was it. You didn’t play. The kids knew where the line was, and you knew what side to be on.”

Hayes said Price was a terrific motivator and knew how to connect with kids. He was a prime example of being on the receiving end of one of Price’s directives during a post-practice run referred to as ‘gut checks’.

On a sloppy field, the result of a day-long rain, players were matched up against each other to compete to see who could run the 100-yard field the fastest and on this particular day Hayes hadn’t fared well against sophomore Doug Farlow.

“He was tearing me up all day,” Hayes said of Farlow. “There was something coach said during that run, and I caught up with him (Farlow) and passed him. After that, I guess he found something to motivate me to do better. He stayed with me the whole time and one time I wanted to quit.

“He was so hard on me,” Hayes said. “They told me he was like that with (former standout quarterback) Bucky (Richardson, too. He wanted to correct every mistake that

I made. From my freshman to sophomore years, he was on me the whole time and I couldn’t make any mistakes.”

Hayes realized later how much Price cared and was trying to get him to always play at his optimum best.

“You have to go back and think about what coaches did to motivate you,” said Hayes, who works in logistics at IMTT in Geismar. “He’s going to push you to the limit and if you can go through Coach Price, there’s nothing you can lose at, unless you just gave up. If you put in the work, you would get something out of it. Most of the guys that put in the work were pretty successful (later life).”

‘He touched a lot of people’

What was Price’s greatest accomplishment in his four–plus decades of coaching?

It wasn’t rooted in a euphoric victory or character-building defeat, but instead, it was a tribute to his mother Catherine steadfastly opposed her son’s use of vulgar language.

“In 45 years, no one’s heard me cuss at school,” he said. “Getting out of the Marines Corps I was tempted plenty of times to let loose. I said a cuss word in front of my mother when I got back from the Marines. She told me I shouldn’t speak that way in front of children and I didn’t. My parents (along with his father Leslie) were a good influence on me.”

Price was a molder of young men, teaching them right from wrong and if they abided by his rules for the
program, they were more than likely to be successful husbands, fathers, and in the workforce.

“We had a lot of successful players that went on and contributed to society,” Price said.

When the topic was first broached of Price’s candidacy for the renaming of the football stadium, Wells listened to plenty of dialogue concerning Price. It ranged from the the overall discipline of the program to the team aspect Broadmoor conveyed the manner in which players were cared for – especially after their playing careers were over.

“Most of the kids that played for him said he believed in hard work,” said Wells, who first encountered Price when he was an assistant principal at nearby Tara, which played its home games at Broadmoor. “A lot of the guys said Coach Price meant a lot to them and had done a lot for them. Some of them went as far in some instances to say he was like a father figure to them. The thing I got was that he was tough. He was consistent and he believed in discipline.”

Price didn’t anticipate such a lengthy stay at Broadmoor, believing eventually that someone better would come along.

“I was fortunate enough to have some people and some kids that believed in what we were doing,” Price said.

More than four decades later, Price never left his alma mater and along the way forged indelible relationships among his coaches and players that remain today.

“I’ve had a great coaching career,” said Brown, a head coach at Bishop Sullivan and St. John of Plaquemine, who also assisted at Redemptorist, Plaquemine, Central and St. Amant. “I worked with so many great people and each of them had special talents of their own and Rusty was certainly one of the best.”

Hayes believed Price could be somewhat rough around the edges until you got to know him. After that, it was an enjoyable rapport that bordered on family.

“It’s going to be very special and is something that should have happened a long time ago,” Hayes said of the stadium’s renaming for Price. “Coach Price has been an icon for our school, very loyal to the school. He gave it his all and never missed a day of practice. He was very encouraging and motivated us. He did all he had to do as a leader for the school.

“It’s like having another father,” Hayes said. “He touched a lot of people. He touched me and I love him.”