By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
For the Bossier Bearkats, practice made perfect.
After a sloppy Week 1 performance at North Caddo in which a halftime lead disappeared in a 22-point Titans’ onslaught, Bearkats coach Gary Smith and his staff challenged their team heading into last Friday night’s home opener against an explosive Glenbrook team.
The ‘Kats responded, and sparkled on both sides of the ball in a 28-9 victory over the Apaches. That bounceback earns Bossier the second Shreveport-Bossier Journal Team of the Week honor of the 2024 season.
Stinging after the opening 37-16 loss, the Bearkats didn’t sulk. They stood tall.
“We had a great week of practice,” said Smith, early in his second season as head coach at his alma mater after a successful run as defensive coordinator at Haughton. “We got on them pretty hard, and I thought they responded really, really well. The good week translated to playing well Friday night.”
He felt it coming. The team had a confident tone on game day, through pregame warmups and the final words the Bearkats heard from their coach before kickoff, Smith believed his players were primed to not only win, but to play well.
They did.
“We talked about it all week – the biggest thing was we won the turnover battle, which we hadn’t done since the first game of last year. We’ve been harping on that and we didn’t have a turnover.”
The message the Bearkats devoured was not a single focus, but it was very simple – three steps to progress and success.
“We talked about the discipline piece, being penalties and turnovers, and we talked about ‘we’re not very tough, gotta get tougher.’ We also talked about controlling the line of scrimmage, being tough on the O-line, being tough on the D-line, and winning those battles,” said Smith.
All three phases clicked. That made Monday morning’s team meeting an affirmation.
“I told them this morning, we have a long way to go, but we got better in all three of those aspects,” said the proud coach, whose team snapped a 10-game skid dating back to a 2023 loss to Glenbrook by nearly the same score (28-6 Apaches in Week 2 last season).
The progress was apparent. Going from allowing nearly 40 to North Caddo, to surrendering just single digits, was a prime example.
“Coach (C.J.) Morgan and coach (Marcus) Hudson run our defense, and defensively I thought we played lights out,” said Smith. “We had some injuries and were missing some guys who I thought we really needed, but I don’t know when was the last time we held a team to nine points. Glenbrook scores a lot, and for us to hold them to nine indicates what a tremendous job that group did and those co-defensive coordinators did.”
There were plenty of good performances, and Smith couldn’t help but chuckle about a few.
“We have a couple of freshmen and they’ve been playing great,” he said. “They’re fun to watch, seeing those guys compete against older guys and be successful.”
Those would be free safety/receiver Montrevell Lewis — “he made some big catches and scored a couple of touchdowns, and was very good on defense,” said Smith – and running back/outside linebacker Ray Davenport, who ran for a couple of TDs and was solid on the other side of the ball.
Then there’s new quarterback Tre Christor, who didn’t play that position in Week 1.
“We moved him to quarterback this week, and he had three days of practice there. Considering that he did a tremendous job running the offense,” said Smith, who couldn’t stifle another proud chuckle. “He played a lot of defense, also.
“He made some mistakes at quarterback, but not the level of mistakes I’d expect after three days. He did a whale of a job.”
Now the challenge is to continue the progress against another nearby small school power, the Logansport Tigers.
“Logansport’s good. Win or lose Friday night, I told them this morning, I want to see us get better in those three aspects: discipline on the penalties and turnovers, toughness, and controlling the line of scrimmage.”
Another great practice week would help the cause, and now, it won’t surprise Smith a bit.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com