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John Ropp, the first football coach at Airline High School and an N-Club Hall of Fame athlete and assistant coach at his alma mater, Northwestern State, died Wednesday at age 95.
Ropp, whose father Dr. R.L. Ropp was president at Louisiana Tech from 1949-62, coached and taught locally at the elementary, junior high, high school and college levels for over 20 years.
He launched Airline’s football program when the school opened in 1964 and was 13-7-1, including a remarkable 9-1-1 mark (the only loss was 21-20 to Lee Hedges’ Woodlawn team featuring Terry Bradshaw and Tommy Spinks) in 1965, his second season.
Northwestern coach Jack Clayton added him as offensive line coach in July 1966. The Demons went a perfect 9-0 that season, the first of nine years Ropp was an assistant at NSU. The Demons had winning seasons in all but his last one, set many offensive school records, and he coached 21 all-conference players for Clayton, Glenn Gossett and George Doherty.
Ropp was a four-sport athlete at Natchitoches High School, helping the Red Devils win a pair of basketball state titles in 1947 and 1948. He was a fullback for coach Harry “Rags” Turpin at Northwestern from 1949-51.
He was a head coach at Plantation Point Elementary in Bossier City before moving to Rusheon Junior High, where he developed one of the state’s most successful middle school athletic programs from 1958-64. His football teams won four Northwest Junior High League championships and had a 50-7 record, including a 21-game win streak, in his eight seasons before he moved to Airline.
He made impact on high schools around north Louisiana after retiring from coaching at NSU. He sold hydraulic fitness equipment to numerous schools before eventually ending his business career, and entertained nursing home residents, church and civic group audiences, friends and family with ventriloquism, magic and poetry into his later years. He published two books of poetry.
Ropp was in the Bossier Hall of Fame as well as the N Club Hall, enshrined in 1992. He was a member of the NSU Foundation board of directors.
Visitation and a funeral service will be in Natchitoches Thursday morning, Dec. 18 at First Baptist Church, where he was a member since 1966.