Synonymous With Success: Carencro High Naming New Field in Honor of Former Head Coach Mac Barousse

by: William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor

Acadiana football coach Bill Dotson developed one of the more revered football programs in the Lafayette Parish region for decades. The Rams had become a perennial winner under Dotson and reached the state semifinals for the first time in 1977.

Dotson was an advocate for all public schools in the parish to receive facility upgrades, an area he believed was a hindrance for local teams to reach the Louisiana Superdome and one day win the parish’s first state championship.

One of the programs Dotson enjoyed spirited battles with was Carencro which had closed the competitive gap against Acadiana once Mac Barousse took over in 1990. Three years later, Barousse guided the Bears to a 28-27 victory in overtime over Neville to become the parish’s beacon of light with their first state title.

Not long after the team’s crowning achievement Barousse said he shared a conversation with Dotson who issued more than congratulations. 

“You messed it up for all of us,” Barousse remembered Dotson said jokingly. “He said he’d been telling people for years in order for us to get football to another level down here, we needed to improve the facilities. There you go and win a state championship and now we’re sentenced to this for another 10 years.”

In the 33 years since the Bears’ breakthrough moment, and subsequently adding another state title in 2020 under coach Tony Courville, parish schools are credited with winning a total of 18 state championships led by Acadiana with six, St. Thomas More five and Lafayette Christian Academy four and Ascension Episcopal one.

“We kind of broke the ice,” Barousse said.

Barousse, the son of a former coaching legend Frank Barousse, cherished his coaching battles and encounters with Dotson because of the amount of respect he had for him until his death in 2001 because of cancer.

Barousse never considered himself a revolutionary, operating under the same guidelines as his peers in the parish who played on natural grass fields that sat inside of a cinder track. Locker rooms were within the school’s gymnasiums and typically adjacent to the weight room.

Progress within the parish never moved at a rapid pace until recently when all schools have been the recipients of artificial turfed fields and all-weather tracks. 

That’s part of the gratification Barousse will feel when he returns to Carencro High at 7 p.m. on Friday to watch the Bears host Lafayette High – his alma – in a District 3-5A game. 

The school will honor Barousse in a pregame ceremony with the naming of its new artificial turfed field ‘Mac Barousse Field’ where Carencro High became synonymous with winning football and remains a staple in the statewide landscape.

Barousse won 74% of his games (144-51), guided the Bears to 15 winning seasons and 15 playoff berths. He won nine district titles (87-25 record), was voted the district’s coach of the year 12 times, and was selected the Class 5A Coach of the Year after the Bears’ 14-1 record which culminated in their first state championship.

“It’s something you don’t ever think about,” said the 64-year-old Barousse, a grandfather of four and 2013 inductee into the LHSAA Hall of Fame. “I didn’t get into this for that kind of stuff. It’s very humbling. I know it’s an honor for a time when I was there. I had a whole bunch of good coaches and a whole bunch of good football players and some great administrators. 

“All of that has to kind of fall into place to have the kind of success we had,” Barousse said. “It feels good to still be remembered but at the same time it’s very humbling and there’s a lot of people that had a lot to do with that. This is definitely a team effort, not a me effort.”

Taking more of a Grounded Approach

Previous to Barousse’s elevation from offensive coordinator under Mike Ortego to head coach in 1990, Carencro High football wasn’t relevant. The Bears hadn’t had a head coach with a winning record in the 24 years before Barousse took over a program that had only had five winning seasons and was 0-of-4 in state playoff competition.

“It was a bad place for a long time and (head) coach (Pat) Kee got it on the right track,” said Courville, an assistant under Barousse who became head coach in 2016 and won the school’s second state title in ’20. “Mike (Ortego) came in (from Opelousas) and took it to another level.”

Barousse, who began showing up on his father’s sideline at Lafayette High at the age of 4, came from an offensive background under head coach Bob Mahfouz and offensive coordinator Larry Dauterive who believed in the forward pass. Barousse parlayed his time at tight end into a scholarship at McNeese State and employed more of a run-heavy offensive approach under head coaches Jack Doland and Ernie Duplechin.

Barousse was introduced in the early 1980s to the concept of the Run-N-Shoot where his brother Mark was a wide receiver for the USFL’s Houston Gamblers who had begun to revolutionize offensive football. He brought the system to the high school level when he was the offensive coordinator at Opelousas but deferred to a more run-oriented triple option by the time he became head coach at Carencro.

“I knew I wanted to run the ball more than I wanted to throw it,” he said. “We had to figure out a way to get that ‘W’ on Friday. Coach Key and (assistant coach Roland Eveland) Rip had run some triple option. We had been trying to integrate some option football, and option passing game at Opelousas with coach Ortego.

“After I got the head coaching job and with Rip, we evolved into the triple option,” he said. “Not a lot of people were doing it anymore. Colleges were moving away from it. We mixed the triple option with the Syracuse ‘freeze’ option which was mid-line veer. We did it out of the I. Acadiana was split-back veer and it was very successful for them over a long period of time because most teams see that offense once a year.”

Barousse, who won a state track outdoor title at Opelousas in 1986 and a total of 19 years at Carencro that also included his duties as athletic director, explained the acceptance of his offense was simple. 

Carencro was starting to produce more than its share of skill players to compensate for a small number of large offensive linemen who were built more to run than overpower the competition. 

Through tireless repetitions in practice, the Bears became a well-oiled machine that would take advantage of having their best athlete at quarterback and his split-second decisions between keeping or pitching the ball became a thing of art.

“We had the athletes, especially at that time,” former Carencro all-state selection Kevin Faulk, who went on to an All-America career at LSU and won three Super Bowls with the New England Patriots. “In this part of Louisiana, you’re known for having athletes and not linemen. Those years we had some guys that could compete.”

Getting to Thanksgiving

Barousse surrounded himself with a terrific coaching staff and a belief the Bears would win sooner than later. 

Courville was a special teams guru and melded with fellow assistants such as Eveland, Craig Brodie, John DeBarge, Al Cain, and eventually Dawson Durbin and Kenny Gennuso, becoming a winning combination that eventually helped put Carencro High football on the statewide map.

During that stretch, the Bears also had an advantage with Billy McCauley coaching at the school’s junior high, implementing the same offensive and defensive schemes the varsity team ran and proved to be a great acclimation for those players.

“Mac was a very organized guy, a highly intelligent guy,” Courville said. “He’s really a humble guy. He was big on trying to get us to be the best that we could be. To study the game, go to clinics as a staff.”

Barousse also set the temperature for the program in their first staff meeting, imploring all three of his coordinators to compile binders with their respective schemes along with short-term and long-term goals for the program.

Getting Carencro, which had never won a playoff game, to a state championship-caliber program in three years appeared a bit far-fetched. 

That’s where Barousse set the bar and never relented.

“We wanted to try and win 10 games every year; we wanted to win the district title and the state championship,” Barousse said. “Those were going to be our goals every year. We talked about it a lot. I had played with some guys in college that really believed that if you were planning on getting there, you needed to talk about it. Don’t just talk about it but put in the work along the way. Follow up on things and make sure you’re thorough. 

“We talked about those goals weekly,” Barousse said. “By the third season, there was a lot of luck involved in it, and of course, we had some very good football players in place to be able to do what we did. It kind of validated a bunch of young guys. We had a bunch of good ideas. I don’t know how good of coaches we were. We were able to accomplish what set out to do and then after that, it was just trying to get back every year which is a tough thing to do.”

Courville was familiar with Carencro’s past struggles but embraced Barousse’s bold nature.

“At that time my mind was like, ‘wow’,” Courville said. “We had buy-in for Mac’s philosophy. Our job to get the buy-in from the players and as a staff I think we did a tremendous job with that. It was a high-quality staff. The kids got coached hard. We were the real school guys, not old school. The middle school coach did a tremendous job with those kids and that made a difference. All of the schools that have solid feeder schools, the varsity’s going to be successful. We had that, too.”

Carencro won its first game, 24-20 over Leesville on Aug. 31, under Barousse and the Bears went on to an 8-3 mark that included a loss in the first round of the state playoffs to Ouachita. For only the second time in school history, a second consecutive winning season followed with a 7-4 record, but so did a first-round state playoff exit with an overtime loss at Neville.

“Back in the day if you got sentenced to a bi-district game in Monroe, it was almost time to call the reconditioning guys, and let’s get the stuff (equipment),” Barousse said. “Looking back on all the years at Carencro, that ’91 team was one of the toughest and most talented we had. We had such a solid team. It kind of set the tone.”

But not without amending the team’s offseason program after consecutive playoff losses to Monroe-area teams.

“We were strong, but we weren’t strong like Neville,” Barousse said. “We had to go back and figure out how to get the kids stronger to win games like that, go the extra mile. We tried to be on the cutting edge of plyometrics. The kids worked extra hard. We had a tough group. They came as good, talented players and became special. It was a soul-searching thing. I think it was the turning point. There’s a lot of people who make the playoffs. You’ve got to play at least until Thanksgiving to feel like you’ve had any type of success in the playoffs.”

First State Championship: ‘It was special’

Carencro responded accordingly to its narrow playoffs loss the year before, exhibiting a mature, hungry team with plenty of talent and motivation.

Faulk, who intercepted nine passes as a freshman defensive back in ’91, moved to quarterback with running options Derrick Beavers and Ernest Lazard behind him for the ’92 season.

“The tailback (Beavers) had 1,000 yards, the fullback (Lazard) had 1,000 yards and the quarterback had 850 yards with another 800 yards passing,” Faulk said. “It was very unique to have almost three guys with 1,000 yards rushing in one season. It wasn’t a secret what Carencro High was going to do. There was a tailback and a fullback in the backfield, and we were running the ball. You had to stop us. That was it. It was a matter of Mac calling the right play on the right down and distance, understanding what the opposing defenses were going to do in certain situations.”

Carencro defeated Sulphur 28-10 to begin the ’92 season which encountered its only bout of adversity a week later in a 24-10 home loss to Catholic High of Baton Rouge. 

The Bears bounced back a week later with a 16-0 shutout of East Ascension, igniting a stretch of 13 consecutive victories to close out the season. They outlasted Northside (16-7) in their narrowest win to close out the district championship, but the team had greater ambitions that year.

“We had a really good team that lost to Neville,” Courville said of the ’91 team. “We had a bunch of those guys coming back. That was the group that set the foundation. We had goals for ourselves as a staff. The kids also had goals.”

Carencro won the school’s first playoff game in decisive fashion – 43-19 over Captain Shreve – and advanced past Archbishop Shaw, 25-21, in a regional game. The Bears found themselves trailing at halftime when Chad Arnaud returned the opening kickoff of the second half 88 yards for a touchdown, Faulk capped a 6 1/2-minute drive with a touchdown and an interception from Charlie Sam clinched the game.

“People were starved for a winning program,” Barousse said of the town’s then 7,000-plus residents. “When you start winning, it just made it easier, and they supported us no matter where we went. We had big crowds at home.”

The next milestone for Carencro occurred the following weekend at Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans where the Bears registered the first road playoff win in school history. They jumped out to a 21-7 halftime lead on the first of two touchdowns from Beavers, and Faulk added rushing scores of 16 and 26 yards, respectively, in the second half for a 34-7 quarterfinal victory.

The playoff surge for Carencro continued and a 32-18 semifinal win over Glen Oaks sent the Bears to the Louisiana Superdome for the first time against a budding nemesis Neville.

The matchup on Dec. 12, 1992, was regarded as one of the best in Class 5A state championship history with plenty of ebb and flow. Lazard tied the game at 21-all on a 30-yard touchdown, and when the Bears went first in overtime, they turned to Lazard for a touchdown run and extra point from Wade Richey, who went on to a career at LSU and with the San Francisco 49ers.

Neville scored on its first possession and needed an extra point to force a second overtime. However, defensive lineman Joe Bellow blocked the kick, cementing a 28-27 victory and the team’s legacy as the parish’s first team to win a state championship.

“It was special,” Barousse said. “It was an awesome time. You have to have a lot of things fall into place. To be lucky, to have good coaches. It was a good group.”

Lazard, who signed at then Northeast Louisiana, was one of four players named to the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Class 5A All-State first team and earned the offensive MVP honors. Faulk and Richey both joined him on the team along with defensive Jonah Cormier and Barousse was voted Coach of the Year.

They were part of a stretch where Barousse and his staff developed 26 first-team all-state players with Faulk, Lazard, Damien James, Garren Jim, and Trent Mackey earning state MVP distinction.

Sustaining a Successful Program

Barousse worked to keep his staffs together and when someone left, usually for a promotion, he tried to attract someone who could seamlessly fit in.

“We were able to maintain the consistency with different guys, the core of the coaching staff I was able to maintain,” he said. “When they moved on, I was able to replace them with really quality coaches from good coaching staffs. To have any success, you have surround yourself with good people and those guys were very important. We were able to win almost 10 games a year over 15 years. The longevity was the part that led me to start thinking about retirement. It’s hard to keep a program at that level that long. There were a lot of good people, a lot of good players.”

Carencro remained a consistent winner under Barousse, recording double-digit wins seven times during his career. That stretch included six appearances in the state quarterfinals, one semifinal, and a return to the Superdome in ’96 against West Monroe.

Following its state crown in ’92, Carencro made three consecutive trips to the quarterfinals and then met West Monroe in the Superdome the year after the Rebels eliminated them 35-2 the previous season. 

The Bears dropped a hard-fought 24-21 decision to the Rebels and LSU-bound fullback Tommy Banks. 

“I blame myself,” Barousse said of the ’96 defeat in the state final. “In the first half, I didn’t think we could run the ball against them. We played around, throwing the ball all over the field. We’re behind at halftime and remember (future UL-Lafayette running back) John Bernard telling me at halftime that I could have left him at home unless I was going to run him. We ran him a bunch in the second half, and they ran a guy named Tommy Banks. It ended up being a three-point game, but we were on the short end.”

Family took precedence in Barousse’s decision in ’04 to leave Carencro for a three-year period and watch his son play quarterback at Lafayette High. He returned to coach the 2007 season and briefly in ’08 before taking a sabbatical, teaching a year at David Thibodeaux, and then officially retiring after nearly 31 years in education.

“He was a player’s coach,” Faulk said of Barousse. “He understood his players but at the same time, he understood that they needed to work hard. When you would ask him for something and you did what you had to do, you didn’t have to worry about it. Everything was going to get taken care of.”

Former student assistant coach Brent Indest returned to Carencro in ’11 and directed the Bears to a 13-2 record and the school’s third appearance in the Class 5A state championship game – falling to West Monroe, 20-13.

Two of Barousse’s assistants – Eveland and Courville – both became head coaches for a total of 11 years. Eveland experienced three winning seasons in four years with a trip to the quarterfinals, and Courville coached for seven years, highlighted by the school’s second state championship during the COVID-shortened season in ’20 with a 35-19 victory over Karr to win the Class 4A state crown.

“The same principles we had with our offense are some of the things that continued with Tony and now with (current head coach) Gavin (Peters),” said Barousse, who won 24 playoff games. “Those kind of kids seem to excel in that offense. It’s been fun to watch.”