By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
It’s the age-old question for teams facing a potential playoff bye and a week off: Are you more concerned about rust or rest?
For the two local coaches whose teams had a bye last week as the high school playoffs began for everyone else, there was a different question: Fishing or scouting?
While other coaches were trying to grind out a playoff win, Airline’s Justin Scogin and Calvary’s Rodney Guin spent their Friday night in different ways.
Scogin and a few of the Viking assistant coaches hit the road and drove to St. Amant (near Baton Rouge) to get a first-hand look at who they would be up against once it was Airline’s turn to start the post season.
“Got in about two o’clock in the morning,” Scogin said of the trip. “Still haven’t recovered.”
Guin, on the other hand, headed to Lake Murvaul in Texas for one of his favorite activities – fishing.
“Hey, I only fished on our day off,” Guin said. “The rest of the time (during the week) we worked, but it was good for us.”
It was a week off that both coaches were happy to have for their team and aren’t overly concerned about the “rust” effect that a week off might have. In fact, it’s nothing new for Guin and Scogin; both were in a similar situation last year.
“We didn’t go as high with the intensity (as in a normal week), but we basically kept it the same,” Scogin said. “We still practiced and lifted and had meetings, just like we would in a normal week.”
“We had the same practice schedule we had every week except for Friday, which would have been a game day,” Guin said. “We had already started with our game plan for this week.”
The Cavaliers, the No. 3 seed in the Division III (select) playoffs, had to wait out who their opponent would be, but they had a pretty good idea it was be De La Salle (New Orleans). They were right – De La Salle (the No. 14 seed) defeated Fisher 48-0 to set up an all-Cavalier second round matchup Friday night at Jerry Barker Stadium.
Airline is the No. 2 seed in the Division I (non-select) playoffs and will face one of those nobody-wants-to-play-them teams in No. 18 seed Westgate (New Iberia), a 28-20 winner of St. Amant.
The Vikings and Tigers will tee it up Friday night at Airline Stadium. “You worry about timing and a little bit of rust with that time off,” Scogin said. “We’ve tried to stay sharp but there’s always a little bit of worry.”
Scogin said he enjoyed the week off after the grind of 10 weeks of games, but his feelings are “50-50” on not having a game in the first round.
“Obviously it was nice to have a week off and have a normal weekend,” he said. “That was nice so the kids could be fresh, but I wouldn’t have minded playing.”
For Guin, it’s a matter of numbers. For everyone else, it takes four wins to get the Superdome to play for the state championship. For his team, it will only take three.
“It’s a three-week period,” he said. “And our kids do a good job of focusing in on that during the playoffs. We’ve had success, so they know what it’s all about.”
De La Salle is no stranger to playoff success either. In a four-year period between 2017 and 2020, the New Orleans school was in the state championship game three times and has won at least one playoff game in every year this decade.
“This is probably the toughest second-round game we’ve played in my years at Calvary,” Guin said. “We’ve had a bunch of blowout games in the previous years. That’s not what we have this week. But I told our players if we can’t win against these guys (De La Salle) then we aren’t going to win it all anyway.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com