FROM THE GROUND UP: HUNTER LANDRY BUILDS LAFAYETTE RENAISSANCE CHARTER IN FIRST VARSITY SEASON
by: William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
The phone calls congratulating Hunter Landry on becoming the head football coach at Lafayette Renaissance Charter eventually became quizzical.
Just why would Landry decide to leave an established state power such as Lafayette Christian Academy, one that he just guided to a Division II state runner-up finish, for the opportunity to join up-and-coming Lafayette Renaissance Charter – two campuses that are separated by 3 ½ miles?
“There were lots of questions,” Landry said. “I’ve had guys I’m close to in the coaching world that reached out. At first, it was congratulations and then out of curiosity, what led to that? All I kept going back to was I felt like God was calling me to go do what we’ve kind of been doing at LCA. To go that same thing down the road. Not only helping kids on the field but off the field as well.”
Landry, 32, had no intentions of leaving LCA after an 11-3 record and the school’s seventh consecutive state finals appearance in three different divisions. The Knights, a school with Class 2A enrollment, fell to St. Thomas More for the second straight year in the Division II state championship game.
After the season Lafayette Renaissance principal Dr. Ronnie Harrison and assistant principal Marcus Simon arranged a meeting with Landry to sell their vision for their school which added a high school campus in 2023 in addition to its more established lower school campus.
Landry, a 2010 graduate of nearby Breaux Bridge High School, became increasingly intrigued with the picture LRC’s administrators painted. He later talked with his wife and after some deep thought, decided to make the jump between two schools that are both part of District 6-2A along with fellow Division III staple Notre Dame of Crowley.
“At the time, I was pretty happy with where I was,” Landry said. “I liked what I heard. I could walk through the halls, and it brought me back to Breaux Bridge High. I talked with my wife and I had a lot of prayer. I don’t think God ever makes mistakes and I felt like this is where I was being called to and I’m happy that I took a leap of faith.”
Seven months after conducting his first team meeting with approximately 30 players, minus rising freshman students, Landry takes an 80-member Lafayette Renaissance Charter squad into its first official LHSAA contest when the Tigers travel to Class 3A Abbeville (0-1) at noon on Saturday.
“I’d like to see us get off to a good start,” Landry said of Saturday’s historic opener. “I’m curious to see how we react to being under the lights. We really don’t have any guy that’s been part of a varsity game yet. Just seeing how we react to being under pressure, and hopefully, we get off to a fast start. Take it one possession at a time and don’t try to do too much. Play our style of football and take it one possession at a time and one week at a time.”
Finding his Calling
Landry’s career path diverged early during his college days at UL-Lafayette. Instead of pursuing a degree in accounting, he took up head coach Paul Broussard’s request to join him at Breaux Bridge and serve as a non-faculty coach.
“At the time I didn’t think much of it,” he said. “Then I decided it was a good way to be around football. I still liked it but not enough to go play in college. After about two months I decided this is what I wanted to do.”
Landry, who played quarterback at Breaux Bridge under both Mike Mowad and Broussard, spent six years with the Tigers in a non-faculty role before becoming full-time in 2015 until 2019. He left for LCA for a year and then coached at Southside in Youngsville for half a year, returning to LCA to join head coach Trev Faulk’s staff.
He was Faulk’s offensive coordinator for two seasons which included state runners-up finishes in both Division III and Division II, the latter where the Knights played up to Class 4A.
When Faulk stepped away, Landry succeeded him as head coach and guided an LCA team, led by LSU-bound Ju’Juan Johnson on offense and Texas-bound tackle Melvin Hills on defense, back to the Superdome against District 5-4A foe STM where the Cougars won, 35-21.
Landry opted to leave two months later for Lafayette Renaissance Charter and reunited with Faulk, whose son is now an eighth grader at the school. The former LSU and NFL linebacker assists both of the school’s 5-6th grade and 7-8th grade football teams and is on the sideline in an assistant’s capacity with the varsity.
“I felt back at home like in Breaux Bridge with the type of kids we have,” Landry said. “Some come from a lot of different backgrounds, and some come from not a whole lot. I felt like this was a chance to impact kids, not only on the field but off the field as well. If we can do any little thing for them, we’ve stepped up. We’ve made it clear from the get-go to try and earn their trust. We’ve bent over backwards to make sure everybody goes with and not without.”
Building from Ground Zero
Landry’s initial reaction to his first team meeting?
“Immediately you could see that the kids were excited,” he said. “Football’s such a big part of the Acadiana area and really throughout the state of Louisiana.”
Because of the rise of LCA’s program, beginning with a Division IV state runner-up finish in 2017, it was hard for anyone associated with Lafayette Renaissance not to be enamored with Landry’s credentials.
In his final season with the Knights, Landry’s offense averaged 48.4 points a game with Johnson, the state’s career leader in touchdowns and total yardage, at the controls.
Before the 30 wide-eyed onlookers at his first team meeting conducted in a small-scale, old weight room, Landry presented a vision for a bright future. He already had a calendar of offseason workouts that would carry the team from February through the start of the season in September.
Once the eighth graders became freshmen, and anyone interested in playing football signed up for athletic P.E., the team’s roster numbers swelled to 80-85 in size, hard work took over, and the preparation for a varsity football season.
LRC went 0-7 and 1-6 the previous two seasons playing a junior varsity schedule.
“They’ve taken every little bit of coaching that we’ve given them and they’ve kind of run with it,” said Landry, who will have a junior varsity and varsity team this season. “They keep showing up. They keep giving us everything they’ve got. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I feel we’re trending in the right direction.”
Landry cautioned that the majority of his first varsity team is comprised of 14-15-year-old players without past varsity experience. He’ll have a group of upperclassmen in the 20-plus range, but the outlook for the program is promising with 60+ underclassmen.
“We’re asking a lot of them to mature early and kind of take control,” Landry said of the freshman and sophomores.
It’s part of the challenge Landry relishes; the opportunity to mold a young group of players into a successful program.
“I’m able to start from the ground up and truly get to form a program the way you want your program to be run,” he said. “It just seemed like a good time to take on a new adventure. It wasn’t an easy decision. I fell in love with LCA and the kids, and it was a tough decision.
“It’s one that I prayed on a lot, and it just felt like it was a good time to take on a new task,” he said. “Just the idea of basically starting from the ground up with this being our first year of varsity football. We were young and knew we needed a lot of work to put in, but the kids have been working extremely hard so far.”
‘They Have Right Now’: Tigers Strive to be Competitive
LRC got the benefit of a dress rehearsal without the game’s outcome being part of the team’s record.
The Tigers defeated J.S. Clark of Opelousas, which is not playing for varsity honors this season, 54-8 last Thursday in rainy conditions in a game played at Northside High School.
“I thought the kids played really well,” Landry said. “The weather conditions weren’t great, but we knew they had to play in the same weather conditions as us. We were just so excited to put pads on and hit a different color jersey. The kids came out fiery, still made a couple of mistakes early on, and then settled down. They got some of the jitters out and played fast and really flew to the football. We got a couple of breaks and were able to put some drives together. They played really well.”
Running backs Dwayne Johnson and Jacquelle Smith each rushed for two touchdowns, helping LRC to a 41-0 halftime cushion. The defense produced four sacks and scored twice with fumble returns from Elijah Rector and Javion Eugene. Special teams also contributed a score when Ja’Courey Duhon, who had one of the team’s five rushing touchdowns, brought back a punt for a score.
LRH follows the Abbeville game with its home debut at Clark Field in Lafayette against Class 3A Ville Platte, a road contest against L.B. Landry in New Orleans, and completes the non-district portion of the schedule against Class 4A Beau Chene at Clark Field.
The Tigers, who will have their on-campus field complete for the 2025 season, begin District 6-2A play on Oct. 11 against LCA at Clark Field.
“It’s a really talented district,” Landry said. “It’s unfortunate you have to go against familiar kids, kids that you’ve coached the last three or four years. We’re just worried about Abbeville and when that game (LCA) comes it will be blown up. Right now, we’re just taking it one game at a time.”
LRC travels to both Welsh and Lake Arthur in district matchups and closes league play with Notre Dame at home on Nov. 1. The Tigers finish the regular season at home against Class 1 Ascension Episcopal, eager to see what the postseason may have in store.
“We hear from everybody that this is a project,” Landry said. “They’re telling us it’s two or three years away from being a competitive team. We tell the juniors and seniors, they don’t really have two or three years after this. They have right now. We’re trying our best to make sure we’re giving them every opportunity to be successful.
“We’re coaching our butts off to make sure we’re putting them in the best spot to be successful,” Landry said. “At the end of the day, if we give it all we’ve got and come up short, at least we could say we gave it everything. We want to be competitive now. We don’t want to wait for the future. We won’t have some of these kids in the future. We want to go out and compete against anybody we play and hopefully by the end of the day, have one more point than them.”