HUDL-Gate: Principal opens up about hectic school week

“My contacts feel like they are glued to my eyeballs,” South Lafourche High School principal Gaye Cheramie says with a laugh as she closes her office door. “It’s been a really crazy week. I’m so tired.”

Cheramie is right – the last calendar week was a hectic one within the school’s storied halls.

South Lafourche and Destrehan high school’s football game on Oct. 25 came and went without a glitch on the field – the Wildcats earned a sound 49-24 victory. But following the game, suspicions started to surface about Destrehan’s game planning for the contest. It seemed like the Wildcats were always one step ahead of the game – it seemed like they knew South Lafourche’s plays better than the Tarpons did, themselves.

Suspicion led to information gathering, which led to a formal allegation. Allegation led to an investigation, which led to a hectic week and ultimately a confession – Destrehan did illegally access the Tarpons’ game plans before the showdown.

In total, five Wildcats’ coaches may never see the field again for Destrehan – suspended and issued criminal summons for accessing and using information that was password protected on the Tarpons’ HUDL website.

Another woman is charged criminally in the case, which has blown up and been featured among several national outlets.

Per the LHSAA’s ruling, Destrehan forfeited the game, which now sits on the official schedule as a 2-0 South Lafourche win.

But Cheramie and others all agree – no one truly came out victorious after the furious week of chaos.

“It’s sad,” Cheramie said. “It’s depressing. Is this what high school athletics are about? Is this the message that we’re going to send to our kids – that it’s OK to get an unfair advantage? Our kids were robbed of an opportunity. … And the Destrehan kids weren’t given a fair shot, either. It’s a lose-lose for the kids all the way around.”

The South Lafourche principal met exclusively with the Tri-Parish Times this past Friday and gave a detailed timeline for the entire week of events. She said the entire situation is among the saddest, most troubling things that she’s ever witnesses during her time as an administrator at multiple schools throughout Lafourche Parish’s school system.

QUESTIONS ARISE EARLY

“I don’t know much about football,” Cheramie says, leaning back in her chair. “But when I saw us shift for the first time, I remember thinking, ‘This is new. This is impressive.’ And then when I saw them respond to our shifts, I thought to myself, ‘Man, they are really smart. This is such a coordinated effort. … I never thought of any wrongdoing. I just thought, ‘Geez, this is a really, really good team we’re playing against tonight.’”

By now, it’s well known that Destrehan is the best prep football team in our area. The Wildcats are a mean machine of size, speed and raw athletes. Destrehan has never been defeated on the field this season. All of their games have been decided by more than 20 points.

To combat the Wildcats’ talent, the Tarpons created a game plan that would involve ball control offense. To do that, South Lafourche would line up in its usual shotgun attack and then shift into heavy formations for power running plays – an offensive base that the team had not used in a game all season.

“We wanted to keep the ball away from their team,” Cheramie said. “They are such a great team. We wanted to slow the game down.”

But on the night of the game, the shifts didn’t work – the Wildcats seemed to know where each player was going on a given play.

“It just seemed like they were a step ahead of us tonight,” Skains said following the game.

After sending the team home in defeat, Skains and his coaching staff stayed at the Tarpons’ field house to break down the game.

During that film session late Friday night, what the staff saw didn’t quite add up.

Not only were the Wildcats not confused by the shifts – the film showed they anticipated them.

A couple of plays in particular drew Skains and his staff’s ire during the Friday night and early Saturday morning film session.

“When our quarterback called a play, before our offense could even move into what the quarterback called, Destrehan was moving,” Cheramie said. “And then we went back to the Thibodaux game and they had run a similar shifting play, and it was complete confusion. Destrehan didn’t know what to do.

“We knew something didn’t add up. We had eight new shifting plays for that game. There was no way they knew them all. There was no way.”

Skains pondered his suspicion all throughout Saturday. But without evidence, he initially didn’t tell the school’s administration about his thoughts.

“He was beating himself up thinking about any suspicious people or anybody that had been to practice, but nothing added up,” Cheramie said. “Then they thought about HUDL. It had to be HUDL.”

They were right – the football social media site proved to be the smoking gun the school needed to make its case.

HUDL YIELDS 8 HOURS OF UNAUTHORIZED USE

“Peyton Guidry is a kid on our team that watches a lot of film. He’s as dedicated as they come,” Cheramie said. “When our coaches checked HUDL, they saw that Peyton had logged about an hour and a half of film. But there was another account that had almost eight hours of time logged.

“It then became obvious. They had gotten into our HUDL and had used it against us.”

Skains found out about the irregular HUDL activity on Saturday evening. He texted Cheramie on Saturday night to formally alert the principal of his allegations that the Wildcats had found a way into the Tarpons’ system.

The principal then called Lafourche Middle School Curriculum Supervisor Bubba Orgeron, who alerted Lafourche Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews.

“It was Saturday night that we all really started to get wind of this,” Cheramie said. “That’s sort of when it all started going down.”

Skains and Cheramie arranged to meet Sunday afternoon – a time where the coach laid out everything he knew.

A HUDL account belonging to a former Tarpons’ player was the account red-flagged for the eight hours of use. The player quit the team, but his account was never de-activated.

Through that account, someone had accessed the team’s practices, cadences and other sensitive football information.

After the meeting, Cheramie said she dove into the LHSAA rulebook to try and see the legality of the situation. She said there wasn’t any particular rule outlining that a clear infraction had taken place.

That’s probably because no situation like this has ever been recorded in the history of the LHSAA.

“We’ve never had one like this,” said LHSAA Executive Director Kenny Henderson. “This situation was the first of its kind for us.”

Cheramie, Skains and South Lafourche Athletics Director Brian Callais contacted the LHSAA requesting a formal investigation on Monday during a telephone conference call with Assistant Executive Director BJ Guzzardo.

Cheramie then headed to Thibodaux later that day to outline the allegations to Lafourche School Board attorney Patrick Amedee.

During that time, Matthews placed a call to Henderson and was told the investigation was underway.

“He told Ms. Matthews that Mr. Guzzardo was on his way to Destrehan High School already,” Cheramie said. “So we just were sort of in a wait and see mode.”

During Guzzardo’s trip to Destrehan on Monday afternoon, he informed the school’s football coaches about the allegations coming from South Lafourche.

The Wildcats denied any wrongdoing, which caused the LHSAA to temporarily close its investigation with a ruling that no wrongdoing had taken place.

“He called Coach Skains and said that they denied the allegations and that there was nothing there,” Cheramie said. “Mr. Guzzardo called me on Tuesday morning and told me the same thing.”

IP ADDRESSES LEADS TO ADMISSION OF GUILT

“The LHSAA told me that HUDL would charge us a fee to find the IP addresses that had logged the account,” Cheramie said. “They told me that they could continue their investigation, but that we’d have to incur the cost of those fees and the cost of the investigation if Destrehan was found to be innocent.

“I told Mr. Guzzardo, ‘I won’t even ask about the cost of the fees because I’m not going to be paying them.’ I told him, ‘I’m sure I’m right, so go forward in whatever capacity you need to go forward. We won’t be paying the fees, Destrehan will be.’”

On Tuesday morning, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office was alerted by South Lafourche High School about the case. The Tarpons’ administration thought they needed authorities involved to secure a court order to obtain the IP addresses.

But it turns out, HUDL had all the information that Cheramie needed. She called the website and got what she expected – proof.

“She gave me the dates tied to that account, along with the times and the usage,” Cheramie said. “She gave me three IP addresses. She was able to tell me that they came from computers. And she was able to tell me that the addresses were in the Luling area.

“No court order was needed. At that point, I sent it on to the lawyer and the superintendent and they sent it on to the sheriff’s department. At the same time, the LHSAA called back and told me, ‘Ms. Cheramie, your verbal word isn’t enough about paying the fee – we need you to sign a contract’. I told them, ‘OK, I’ll sign it, but in the mean time, here’s the evidence and the proof that you’re looking for.’”

With the investigation back under way, the LHSAA headed back to Destrehan on Tuesday afternoon to speak with several coaches within the school.

During that time, five assistant coaches (Lance Ledet, Daniel Luquet, Wayne Sentilles, Greg Boyne and Ryan Fournier) admitted to accessing the team’s HUDL account and using it to make a game plan against the Tarpons.

During the investigation, Fournier was labeled as the main culprit. A South Lafourche graduate and former Tarpons’ coach, the Larose resident admitted to getting the password from the former player, which led to the usage.

Authorities also contacted the coaches, who again admitted their wrongdoings to investigators.

On Wednesday at about 3 p.m., the LHSAA ordered the Wildcats to forfeit the game versus South Lafourche, while also suspending Fournier for the regular season and playoffs. The other four coaches are suspended for just the remainder of the regular season. They may coach from the press box in the playoffs.

At about 5 p.m., Fournier and his girlfriend Emily Guidry were charged criminally with offenses against intellectual property.

Throughout the next 24 hours, the other four coaches were charged as well. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office said it has no reason to believe that anyone else was involved in the case.

Cheramie said she wishes the situation wouldn’t have come to criminal charges.

“I wish they would have just admitted it when the LHSAA approached them on Monday,” she said. “All of this would have been over with had they just done that.”

Cheramie also said that she’s heartbroken that the idea was premeditated from an alum of the school.

Fournier was a Tarpons’ assistant coach in 2009 – one of the team’s most successful seasons in recent memory. He then went to Destrehan where he’s been an assistant coach since 2010.

Fournier has applied to be the Tarpons’ head coach in 2009 and 2012. Sources close to the Tarpons’ program said that each time Fournier applied, he was passed over for the job, but was offered a spot on the team’s staff to grow as a coach.

The 29-year-old accepted in 2009 when the school hired veteran coach Terry Farmer. He declined in 2012 when the team hired Skains.

“That breaks my heart – it really does,” Cheramie said. “South Lafourche High School is a special place. We touch people’s lives and really impact people at an important time in our lives. For someone that’s a part of this family to be a part of something like this – it’s depressing. It really is. It’s not a good feeling at all.”

Throughout the course of the week, the Tri-Parish Times has attempted unsuccessfully to contact Destrehan football coach Stephen Robicheaux, principal Stephen Weber and officials with the St. Charles Parish School System.

Robicheaux did speak following the Wildcats’ win against H.L. Bourgeois on Friday night, but refused to answer questions about the investigation.

He acknowledged no wrongdoing within his program and said that the assistant coaches that got suspended were “fine people.” He added that the Wildcats will play the remainder of the season on their behalf in a quest to win the Class 5A State Championship.

“I told those guys tonight, ‘You know what? You’re well-coached. Those guys that are not with us tonight have done an unbelievable job of coaching you guys and you’re ready to go,’” Robicheaux said. “We’ll go on. Our guys that are not with us are very special guys and these kids know it, and they know they’re going to (continue to play) for them.”

LOCAL REACTION – COACHES SIDE WITH SOUTH LAFOURCHE

Many local coaches declined to comment on the situation between the two teams out of respect to the coaches involved.

“I work with both schools, so I’ll pass on this one,” Terrebonne football coach Gary Hill said.

“That’s a tough one,” Thibodaux coach Chris Dugas added in agreement.

But those who spoke on record about the topic all seem to agree that the Tarpons are right in challenging the Wildcats’ behavior.

“I’d do exactly what South Lafourche did,” Covenant Christian Academy coach Blyght Wunstell said. “I don’t know the full details of the situation, but if one team had access to something that the other didn’t, then that’s not right. I think they have a right to be angry, and I think it’s sad that those coaches thought to do something of that nature.”

“It’s wrong – period,” Central Catholic coach David Fuhrer added. “I don’t blame South Lafourche. We’d have done the same thing here. This is high school athletics and these are kids on the field. To have a win-at-all costs attitude like that is just not right.”

The coaches questioned all agreed that Destrehan is a great football team – one of the best in Louisiana. Most even went so far as to say that the Wildcats would have still won the game with or without the HUDL hacking.

But Morgan City coach Dennis Lorio said that this situation should let all coaches be alerted about the Internet and its tracking capabilities.

Lorio said that opposing coaches used to have to meet halfway to exchange rolls of film before facing an opponent. HUDL was invented as a way to stop that timely travel and make some information available to everyone involved.

But like with anything else, Lorio said this proves that the Internet can be used for the wrong reasons.

“We had a meeting and told our kids this week that this is another example of how the internet works,” Lorio said. “Just because you post something and think it’s private, everything can be tracked. HUDL is a great website. It lets us do a lot of things to help our team and also the kids. But I guess now we’ve open up a real can of worms here, haven’t we?”

Skains surely learned his lesson. He said he will now more closely guard his team’s online accounts.

The fact that he has to is “sad,” according to Cheramie, who said this week has proven that prep athletics have gotten too centered on wins and losses and not enough on the kids.

She said that if she were the principal of Destrehan High School, she would fire the coaches involved.

“They would be fired from coaching here,” Cheramie said. “Not just two games and then you can coach in the press box or anything like that. And then I would recommend termination from my school.

“You’ve got to set an example for these boys. And this isn’t the example we need to set. This is not the way that role models are supposed to act, because these boys look up to their coaches and look at them for trust and support at this critical time in their lives.

Wunstell and others questioned didn’t disagree.

“It’s a tough one, but I think we’d meet as a school and we’d have to consider getting rid of the coaches, as well,” Wunstell said. “I think when you lay all of the facts on the table, it just seems like the right thing to do. I know Destrehan is a great program with great people. But I think they made a mistake here.”

“We’d have won that game on that night – we believe that in our heart of hearts,” Cheramie added. “We worked so hard. It was homecoming night. Our kids played their hearts out. But we didn’t get a fair chance. All we wanted was a fair crack at them. And we didn’t get that.

“Now, we’ll never know. And when you’re dealing with kids this age, that’s sad.”

THE LEAD OFFENDER – Former South Lafourche assistant football coach Ryan Fournier talks to players during a Gridiron Alumni exhibition game in Thibodaux. Fournier, a former South Lafourche High School player and coach is one of five coaches suspended after admitting to illegally using the Tarpons’ HUDL account without authorization. 

CASEY GISCLAIR | TRI-PARISH TIMES