Super Cooper: St. Amant’s latest quarterback continues Babin family legacy
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
Before St. Amant’s Cooper Babin ever took a snap at quarterback, he instinctively knew where to go with the football. He’s perceptive enough to realize his ability to run is based on the alignment of the safety.
Growing up in a football family has had its privileges, and Babin, an aspiring quarterback, has been fortunate to have such resources at his fingertips as both his father, uncle, and grandfather have either played the position or coached the sport.
“That’s been something we’ve done together all along,” said Babin’s father, Seth, St. Amant’s offensive coordinator for the past 18 years. “Cooper has always been around the game. If we’re watching something together, I’ve always taken them as teaching moments. I feel like you can’t know enough about your craft. Long before he ever took snaps as a quarterback, we worked on talking about those types of things and what to see. He’s always taken to it.”
Seth and Brian Babin just didn’t play the position but redefined the standard of play at St. Amant, where, along with their grandfather Benny Babin, they will all be inducted into St. Amant High Hall of Fame during a ceremony on Thursday.
The following evening will be Cooper Babin’s opportunity to capture the spotlight and help St. Amant (2-0) try and remain undefeated. The Gators host Class 3A’s ninth-ranked team, John F. Kennedy (1-1), at 7 p.m. at The Pit.
“It’s going to be fun,” Cooper said of Thursday’s Hall of Fame ceremony, where the Babin clan will be part of a seven-member class. “I’m excited to see it. They both had great careers, and my grandpa played and coached here. They’ve all done great things and have helped a lot. This is the first time I get to see them get credit for what they’ve done.”
The 6-foot, 175-pound Cooper Babin’s off to a scorching start to match that of his team.
He’s completed 39 of 59 passes for 675 yards and six touchdowns and added 196 yards and six scores on 23 rushing attempts.
“He’s the kind of kid that’s been around the game his whole life,” St. Amant coach David Oliver said. “His grandparents were both coaches in Ascension Parish for many years. His dad’s our offensive coordinator, so he’s grown up around the game and seen a lot of St. Amant football.”
Cooper Babin authored his first signature moment of the season in last Thursday’s 60-56 victory over Cecilia.
Babin rushed for two early touchdowns and helped the Gators grab a 21-0 lead in the first quarter, and took a 33-13 lead into halftime. The visitors’ big-play capability was a catalyst in their ability to not only rally but take a 56-53 lead with 1:22 remaining in the game.
With his team at its own 29 and with no timeouts, Babin smartly moved St. Amant downfield, utilizing the sidelines to preserve time and also taking advantage of a pass interference penalty. The Gators never faced a third-down situation with Babin completing 5 of 7 passes to cover the 71 yards, the last five going to Quinten Elisar toward the corner of the end zone for the game-winning score with 12 seconds to go.
“One of the biggest plays of that drive, one that I hadn’t seen him make, was when he threw one away,” Oliver said. “That sounds strange, but instead of trying to force something that wasn’t there and try to make a play which he had done some in the past, I saw the maturity and growth there with that.”
The dramatic drive, which included one final defensive play, concluded an extraordinary performance from Babin, who totaled 550 yards – 401 passing, 149 rushing – and eight of his team’s nine touchdowns.
“I want to be remembered for more than just being a good player,” he said. “We have a good team this year. We have a team that can do it. I want to be remembered for being part of a great team, one of the better teams at St. Amant, and doing some things that haven’t been done before.”
The Babin-St. Amant playing legacy was established between 1999-2005 when Seth and Brian Babin piggybacked each other’s careers.
Seth, who earned a total of eight letters at St. Amant, was a three-time all-district quarterback and led the Gators to consecutive district championships in 1999-2000. As a senior, he passed for 1,836 yards and 13 TDs and added another 764 yards and 18 TDs on the ground.
Seth concluded his high school career with 12 school records before signing with Southeastern Louisiana and was the Lions’ team captain in 2006. He remains eighth in school history with a 60.9 completion percentage.
Brian was a three-sport standout, a three-time all-district choice in football and the league’s offensive MVP and all-state selection in ’03. He was a member of the school’s state championship baseball team in ’04.
Brian concluded his career at St. Amant with more than 6,000 passing yards, including a single-season record of 2,333. He also signed with SLU and became the school’s third-leading passer with 7,405 yards and 62 touchdowns.
“I knew they both played quarterback,” Cooper Babin said. “When I was younger, I didn’t play quarterback at first. I played wide receiver and defense. Playing all of those positions helped me learn how to play the game, learn how to play quarterback. Not just throwing the ball, but running the ball, too.”
Benny Babin, a graduate of both St. Amant and SLU, further solidified the family’s athletic legacy during a three-plus-decade career in coaching.
Although he was the girls’ track coach at St. Amant for 26 years, winning the district title in ’25, Babin was a staple in Ascension Parish for his coaching at Galvez Middle and sending top-flight athletes to St. Amant.
Galvez Middle football was 195-65-3 in 36 seasons under Babin, who is also credited with winning 19 other parish championships. He won 12 parish titles in boys basketball (6) and girls basketball (2), along with girls track (2) and boys track (2).
“He’s constantly fed us with developed players that were hungry and ready to come into our program,” Oliver said.
Cooper’s best recollection of playing football for the first time was that of a toddler.
“I liked it immediately,” he said.
His introduction to St. Amant football was that of serving as a ball boy in the third grade, but his father went back even farther before that.
“He was running around in the bleachers,” he said. “He never missed a game. This is all he knows, and that’s The Pit on Friday night.”
Seth said it was common to find his son drawing up plays, a clear indication of where Cooper’s future was headed. They watched film together, studied defensive coverages that provided him with a huge advantage when it came to understanding where the ball should go against a Cover 2 look, or against teams that applied press man coverage at the line of scrimmage.
“Sometimes with me working on Saturdays, I may not have gotten to his pee-wee games,” Seth said. “My parents would also film the game, and if I missed it in person, we definitely went over it together and watched it. Even if I was able to make it, we spent time over the weekend looking at it and just teaching him … In this situation, time on the clock. Just starting that knowledge, what he needed to do as he got older. He’s always been the type of kid that once you teach him something, it’s going to be in his bag of tricks.”
Cooper said he was introduced to some of the identical plays at St. Amant during his time at Galvez Middle. Fast-forward four years, and it’s easy to understand his level of comfort within the offense and level of poise he’s exhibited over the course of his career.
“I’ve been running the offense forever,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for four years here. I’m extremely comfortable with it.”
Instead of it being a potential deterrent, Cooper Babin accepted his path at St. Amant – one that had been established by his father and uncle. If anything, it served as a motivator to try to surpass the bar they previously set.
“It wasn’t ever like a pressure to me,” he said. “I kind of embraced it. I wanted to be a quarterback. Everybody used to tell me how good both of them were. I’ve always tried to be better than them.”
Seth said that his son’s competitiveness serves him well when conversations about the family’s quarterback hierarchy arise.
“He’s always made that perfectly clear to both of us,” he said, “his intentions are to be better, not as good, but better than us. He just keeps it playful, though.”
Cooper Babin’s varsity career arrived early when St. Amant’s starting quarterback suffered a broken leg on the third play of the 2022 opener against Carver. Oliver said the staff brought in Babin once the team’s backup encountered some difficulty in moving the team, thus giving Babin, a freshman, and the No. 2 quarterback alternating series.
“He kind of got thrown to the wolves as a freshman,” said Oliver, the school’s winningest coach with 111 victories. “We didn’t have a lot of great weapons around him. It was a rough year (4-7, first round playoff loss), and for him to go in under those circumstances and give us some minutes.”
Babin was the established starter to begin the ’23 season, but a collarbone injury on the third play of the season opener with Carver sidelined him until the fifth week.
The Gators were in the midst of a 5-0 start when Babin returned, helping the Gators to a 9-1 regular season and a tri-championship for the district title with Dutchtown and Walker.
Babin was part of an extraordinary effort in the team’s state regional playoff with Mandeville, a game they were edged, 42-41. He finished the season with 1,057 yards passing and 11 touchdowns.
He enjoyed a full season in 2024, leading St. Amant to a District 5-5A championship and 7-4 record in a season that ended with a first-round setback against Westgate.
Babin, the district’s first team quarterback, threw for a career-high 1,614 yards and 18 TDs. He also rushed for 383 yards and 7 TDs, setting the stage for his final season, where a talented and experienced senior class awaited.
“We’ve been playing for a long time since pee-wee, middle school, and throughout high school, and now it’s our senior year,” he said. “We’re looking to end it on a good note. We want to play as long as we can. We want to make it to December. We just want to go out and win every single game.”
Oliver pointed to a veteran receiver corps of seniors such as Kavin Taylor, Jermichael Millien, Landon Blanchard and Elisar that provide Babin with proven production.
“This is a year where we’ve developed some skill guys around him,” he said. “A lot of them are childhood friends of his. The O-line has gelled as a group, grown into bigger, faster, stronger guys. Not only is he playing better and faster and doing a great job, but the weapons we have around him are significant also.”
Cooper’s final season also meant the final year of playing for his father.
Seth said it’s easy for outsiders to measure the football part of his life with his son in months, but as a father and coach, he celebrates each day.
“To get to coach him is special,” he said. “I’ve got to try to remind myself that this is his senior year, this is our last go at it. To make sure each week is embraced. It’s been really special to this point, and we’re trying to keep it up. It’s easy to lose track of that sometimes. You work so hard, and over a four-year span, it seems like you have all of this time. The seniors are doing a lot of things for the last time.”
The communication – both verbally and non-verbally – is constant between Seth and Cooper during a game.
St. Amant operates from a no-huddle spread where Seth signals in each play to Cooper, who then takes a look at the defense to determine whether the play will succeed of possibly fail.
That’s why fans will see Cooper calmy taking his time in his assessment of the defense’s front and secondary and look back toward the sideline and see whether or not his father has changed the play or not.
“Our language is the same,” Seth said. “He knows the expectations, the scenarios. The offense becomes fluid. It’s not like the moment’s too big for him. He’s known for his experience to help his teammates and run the show, be a coach on the field.”
Coaching, like defenders, could come from different angles where his uncle and grandfather are usually situated on the team’s sideline and ready to offer advice.
“I’ll come off the field and always get something from either of them,” Cooper said. “A lot of the time it’s just advice to help me keep my head in it. To make sure I know certain things. There may be certain things I may not see, things they’ve gone through, that I haven’t gone through yet. It’s very nice to have that. They give me a lot of support and advice, and it helps a lot.”
St. Amant’s fast start to the season can be attributed to Cooper Babin’s play. He’s averaged 436 yards of total offense a game and accounted for 12 touchdowns, pushing his career passing total to 2,908 yards and 32 touchdowns.
The Gators’ latest win was a flawless execution of the two-minute drill administered by Seth Babin.
His son didn’t flinch under the circumstances after St. Amant lost the lead for the first time in 46-plus minutes of action.
“The big part was we went down after having the lead,” Seth said. “Our guys weren’t shellshocked. They believed if they possessed the ball one more time, we would score. We spread the ball around and got out of bounds. We attacked the middle field when we got the opportunity. We got the ball right back to the refs so we could snap it when the chains were set.”
St. Amant’s final play on second-and-goal was a result of constant repetition between Cooper Babin and his receivers. When Cecilia showed man coverage for the first time, Babin and Elisar were on the same page and knew where the ball was going to go to win the game.
“When we started off, we’d have them give each other signals to make sure each other got it,” Oliver said. “We’ve evolved to a wink and a nod. Just a glance. Those are tough routes to defend because you’re throwing it to where they’re not.
“Cooper’s from a football family; he’s just a tremendous leader, and you see his maturity,” Oliver said. “He’s really starting to understand the ins and the outs of the game. It was a two-minute drill, and it was almost automatic.”
The team’s offensive coordinator was extremely pleased with the entire unit, especially the quarterback, who flourished under pressure and successfully drove his team to victory.
“I enjoyed just the journey we’ve had, being able to coach him,” Seth said. “You have to take a step back from time to time, just realize it is special. The memories are going to be there more than the accomplishments. Being along for the ride has to be what you prioritize more than outcomes.”