By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
PLAIN DEALING – It is a warm September afternoon and the Plain Dealing Lions are working on their kickoff coverage in preparation for their upcoming game.
Coach Clint Walker spares no detail; he has them practice lining up on the sideline and running to their individual spots in the kickoff formation. Then he reminds them that the upcoming game is on the road, so the Lions will enter from the opposite side of the field. So they do it again from a different direction.
They practice the kickoff with a code number to designate what kind of kick it should be. When they get the number, senior kicker William Boyd yells out “Ready Right?”
“Ready!”
“Ready Left?”
“Ready!”
But Boyd is more of a lineman than a kicker and after he makes contact with the ball, you can immediately hear him say “Aw, shoot!” as the ball trickles down the field.
So they line up and try it again.
Walker would love to have another group of players, as every other school in Caddo-Bossier Parishes has, to serve as a return team to give the kickoff team some perspective.
But he doesn’t have that. Instead, he has just one player on the receiving end – and that’s mainly just to retrieve the ball.
There are only 15 players on the Plain Dealing football team – 16, if you count one who is injured – but they show up every day and every practice, ready to go to work as if they have won 26 games in a row.
Instead, they have lost 26 in a row.
It’s a challenge, to be sure, but Walker has learned a lot in three years as head coach about motivation.
“It’s just day by day,” he says. “Just keep them interested in the game and keep teaching them. Just keep plugging along. The way we approach it is one play at a time. If we can get a positive out of a play, then we are doing good.”
***
As the Lions go through their drills, a worker on a riding lawnmower makes his way around the football field to cut the grass. That is more symbolic than you may realize.
Tucked in the northern section of Bossier Parish – only eight miles from the Arkansas border – Plain Dealing is miles away from its fellow parish schools in more ways than just geography.
Of the other five schools in Bossier Parish, four have had artificial turf installed at their home facility. The other (Benton) is scheduled to get turf put in as soon as the 2024 season is completed.
Meanwhile, no one is holding their breath waiting on the turf installers to show up at Plain Dealing.
The stadium looks much the same as it did 20 or 30 years ago. There is grass to mow and hash marks to paint before every game. Other schools have practice facilities to keep the wear-and-tear on the turf to a minimum. Plain Dealing has a place to call a practice area if it wanted to, but it’s really more like an open field.
To say the least, this would not be considered a destination job for a high school coach.
But Clint Walker took the job four years ago with his eyes wide open. He knew there was one main challenge and it wasn’t his facilities or what other schools in Bossier Parish had or didn’t have.
“It’s all about numbers,” he says.
And Plain Dealing just doesn’t have them.
It is a Class 1A school in name only. In the reclassification enrollment numbers that were used for the 2024 and 2025 football seasons, Plain Dealing is the lowest among all of the football playing schools in the state. (Class 1A is the lowest classification that plays football).
In fact, the school’s enrollment would place it in the middle of Class C – the lowest of the seven classifications in the state. There are schools in 1A that are 184 percent larger than Plain Dealing. That’s the equivalent of a large Class 2A school playing in Class 5A.
The enrollment listed by the LHSAA for Plain Dealing is 81, but Walker says it’s actually less than that by a dozen or so. Remember, that’s boys and girls. The fact that Walker has 16 players on the team is actually a pretty high percentage of the high school enrollment. “We have 30 or 40 percent of the male high school population playing football,” he says. “Not a lot of schools can say that.”
But three players are in the seventh grade and about the same number are in the eighth grade. Which means that almost half of his team isn’t even in high school.
***
The 47-year-old Walker has been in coaching for 25 years. He’s a Northwood High graduate, but has spent most of his time coaching in Bossier Parish.
Before he came to Plain Dealing, he was at Bossier High where he served as offensive line coach under Michael Concilio.
“He was a very hard worker and took a lot of initiative,” Concilio says. “He built our offensive line into something special. Those kids really looked up to him and really respected him. That says a lot about him as a coach.”
You’ll be waiting a long time if you are looking for someone in the coaching profession to say anything negative about Clint Walker.
“He’s such a good guy and really knows the game,” says Mike Greene, a former Airline High head coach who has known Walker for more than 20 years. “I was so glad for him to get his chance at Plain Dealing. He’s very patient and will teach those kids how to play the game.”
“He has a really good way of handling kids,” Concilio says. “And that is hard to do. Knowing how to deal with frustrations, knowing how to deal with complications that they may be having day in and day out. I really leaned on him for a lot of advice when we were (at Bossier).”
But Walker has to coach in a way that is unlike other coaches in the area. Almost all of his players play both offense and defense, which takes its toll not only physically but mentally as well.
“The thing I want us to improve on is discipline,” he says. “Not just jumping offsides, but staying in there the whole game at the end when they are really tired. It’s hard to keep a kid who never comes out focused the entire time. We asking our kids to do something hardly any others have to do and play both ways.”
***
The last time Plain Dealing won a football game was Oct. 8, 2021, when the Lions defeated Ringgold 38-6. In ’22, the closest they came was a 36-34 loss to Ringgold. Last year, the closest margin was 31 points.
In the opening game of the 2024 season, the Lions took on Tensas, the second-smallest school in Class 1A. Both teams knew what was on the line since Tensas had only won one game in each of the last three years.
Playing at home, the Lions got out to a 14-8 lead in the fourth quarter and a chance to break the streak, but Tensas drove the field to score and get the two-point conversion to go up 16-14 with four minutes left.
Plain Dealing responded with a drive and was in Tensas territory when a Lion fumbled after a 10-yard gain. However, the Plain Dealing defense held and the offense got the ball back with two minutes left and was on the move again, but a potential touchdown pass was dropped and the rally fell short.
“As a coach, you just want to give them a chance to win the game,” Walker said. “We just didn’t execute.”
In Week 2, it was a 64-0 loss to the same team that Plain Dealing beat in 2021 – Ringgold. This week, it’s a trip to Class 2A Lakeside. Then comes defending 1A state runner-up Haynesville.
The question is not how he keeps his players motivated. Rather, how does Clint Walker keep himself motivated?
“I want to improve every day, just like I want the kids to do,” he says. “Just knowing there are kids out here who want to play the game.
“They wouldn’t go through all of this if they didn’t.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com