Haughton’s Bucs have 40 wins in the last four football seasons, and are on pace to make it 50 wins in five years with a 5-0 start this season.
The best Haughton records in the last four seasons are 10-2 by the 2008 team and 12-1 by the 2010 team, which included quarterback Dakota Prescott and wide receiver Damon Gladney.
The 6-2, 235-pound Prescott, who passed for 6,500 yards and 81 touchdowns in three years as the Bucs’ starting quarterback, received scholarship offers from LSU and TCU, but signed with Mississippi State — where he is now backing up starter Tyler Russell as a redshirt freshman. Prescott has scored a couple of touchdowns in the last three weeks. He also had 1,800 yards and 38 touchdowns rushing during his high school career.
Damon Gladney, who was Prescott’s favorite receiver at Haughton, is being redshirted at McNeese State this year.
Brandon Harris completed 11 of 23 passes for 214 yards and three touchdowns in Haughton’s 56-14 romp past Loyola College Prep Friday night,
Going into this week’s Southwood game, Parkway needed one more win to assure the 2012 Panthers of extending their school record to eight consecutive winning seasons.
Parkway had a combined total of five winning seasons in the previous 36 years, but winning seasons have been business as usual for the Panthers since they started the streak with back-to-back 6-5 seasons in 2005 and 2006, snapping a streak of 10 straight losing seasons. Before the current streak, the school record for consecutive winning seasons was two.
The 2012 Panthers don’t depend entirely on the passing of Harris for their offensive firepower. Demetrius McAtee had 107 yards rushing in nine carries last week, and has been a serious running threat throughout the first half of the season.
Parkway is averaging 44.4 points per game through the first five weeks of the 2012 season, a close second to Haughton’s average of 45.6 points per game. Louisiana New Tech (Plain Dealing) is also averaging 40.8 points per game, followed by Class 5A Airline at 33.4.
But Coach David Feaster thinks the Parkway defense has played a key role in the team’s success this season. Loyola was the first team to score more than one touchdown against Parkway since a season-opening 36-13 win over Alexandria Senior High.
Haughton coach Rodney Guin, whose Bucs open District 1-5A play against Byrd at Haughton this week, says the Bucs are about the same point going into district play that they’ve been in the past few years.
“Offensively, we’re doing what we have normally done,” Guin says. “We have five sophomores playing on defense, but they’re getting better.”
Senior linebackers Robert Kennon and Dylan Wallace have led the Bucs’ defense in the first half of the 2012 season.
Airline and Haughton were the only District 1-5A teams that received votes in last week’s Louisiana Sports Writers’ Association Class 5A poll, but Guin doesn’t think the winner of their game will necessarily be favored to win the district title.
“The district race is wide open right now,” he said Saturday. “Byrd (the defending champion) and several other teams (including Parkway) are in the thick of it.”
If the Bucs reach the playoffs again, the team that eliminates them has a tough act to follow. In four of the last five seasons, Haughton has lost to the eventual state champions in the state playoffs.
Jerry Byrd is the former sports editor of the Bossier Press-Tribune and an award-winning columnist. Check out a few hundred of his columns on www.jerrybyrd.com. You can contact him by E-mail at
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