New coach lifting expectation, roster numbers

Longtime football coach Craig Brodie follows the same formula every year when building his depth chart for the upcoming season.

The former Catholic of New Iberia and Westgate coach said he first identifies his best overall athlete.

“We make him the quarterback,” Brodie explains. “I get the best player because I coach the quarterbacks.”

From there, the next handful of elite athletes on the roster all play defense.

“If we were having a draft or a lottery among our kids, that’s the way we’d go about splitting up the team,” Brodie said. “You need a high quantity of athletes on that side of that defensive side of the ball.”

That’s the formula the longtime coach hopes is a recipe for success as he looks to turn around Berwick’s football program in his first season as the school’s head coach.

“Our principal, Dr. (Buffy) Fegenbush has made the commitment to get the football team back on track,” Brodie said. “And the entire school and community has been very supportive of everything we’ve tried to do. … We’re just ready to take the field to try and show them we’re headed on the right track.”

The first pick of the so-called Panthers’ fantasy draft was junior Reed Leonard, who will start as the Panthers’ quarterback.

Standing 6-foot and weighing 185 pounds, Leonard will serve as both a run and pass threat in Brodie’s spread offense.

The Panthers also ran a spread attack under former coach Mike Thomas, but will now focus more on the passing game than in years past.

“I couldn’t be more excited,” Leonard said. “Coach Brodie is teaching me a lot and he’s teaching everybody a lot. He’s doing a really good job and we’re all very ready to go.”

A few weeks into practice, the veteran coach said he can see Leonard’s enthusiasm and called him potentially one of the best he’s ever coached.

That’s high praise, considering at Westgate, Brodie’s quarterback was former LSU wide receiver Jared Mitchell.

The veteran coach also had a hand in developing current Tulane quarterback Taylor Bullock.

“He’s as good as anyone I’ve ever had in terms of being a quarterback,” Brodie said. “He’s not the runner that Jared and some of my other guys were, but he’s athletic and he can run if he has to. But he’s got a real good arm and he throws a really good ball.”

Complimenting Leonard on offense is inexperience, lots and lots of inexperience.

The Panthers return just one offensive starter from last year’s 2-8 squad, senior left guard Tim Billiot.

Joining Billiot on the offensive line will be three sophomores and one junior.

“It’ll be trial by fire up front for a while,” Brodie said.

As a whole, the Panthers just have seven seniors on their entire roster.

“It would be bad if last year we were successful,” Brodie said. “But not having a big senior class gives us an opportunity to play a lot of younger guys earlier … to get them some experience they’ll need to succeed later in their careers here.”

The Panthers will have senior experience on the edges with split end and halfback with Matt Skelton and Brad Lemoine, who are expected to round out the team’s skill players.

On defense, Berwick returns five starters from last year’s squad.

But Brodie said even if the Panthers returned all 11 starters, he’d have still looked to overhaul that side of the football.

That’s because Berwick allowed 30 or more points in six of their 10 games last year.

Brodie knows his new team’s defensive struggles first-hand. Last year as Franklin’s offensive coordinator, he coached his offense to a 71-point Friday night against the Panthers.

” We weren’t very good last year defensively,” Brodie said. “We want to change that. We’re really going to emphasize that a lot. … That’s why I always make it a point to put all of those good athletes on defense.”

Despite last year’s struggles, Brodie said he believes he has a lot of talent on his depth chart, most notably returning starters like senior defensive end Matt Skelton, junior linebackers Josh Engleton and Vincent Caruso and senior safety Lee Rhodes.

Engleton has really caught the eye of the Panthers’ coaches and teammates and is expected to establish himself as a leader in the team’s defense.

Standing 6-foot-2 and weighing 210 pounds, he certainly looks the part of a big-time player.

“He’s probably our best overall athlete in terms of physicality,” Brodie said. “Any position we’d ask him to play, he probably would be able to do it.”

Away from wins and losses, the biggest thing Brodie believes he has done so far at Berwick is changed the culture inside the team’s locker room and also within the community.

After fielding a roster of “around 30 kids,” in the spring, the team’s roster now sits at 70 players.

“It’s all about changing the mindset,” the coach explained. “It’s hard to get kids out here when you’re losing games. … We’re making the commitment to get this back on track.”

So with a first-year coach and some talented players, don’t sleep on Berwick in their quest to reestablish themselves as a premier program in District 9-3A.

“To fix this, we’ve got to do everything we haven’t done the past few years,” Leonard said. “We’ve got to play. We’ve got to have heart. We can’t just come out here like regular, old Berwick. You know what? We’re no longer Berwick. We’re a team. We’re ready to come out and play to show the rest of the district that that’s the case.”

Berwick Panthers

District 9-3A

Sept. 2 vs. Chalmette

Sept. 9 vs. Morgan City

Sept. 15 at Central Catholic

Sept. 23 at Erath*

Sept. 30 vs. Patterson*

Oct. 7 vs. North Vermilion*

Oct. 14 at Hanson Memorial

Oct. 21 vs. Kaplan*

Oct. 28 at Abbeville*

Nov. 4 at Franklin*

* Denotes district game

Coach: Craig Brodie

Assistant Coaches: Craig Brodie Jr., Paul Gilder, Michael Thomas, Kenneth Williams

Record last season: 2-8

Returning Starters: 6

Players to Watch: Reed Leonard, Matt Skelton, Lee Rhodes

Primary Strength: Talented quarterback play

Fun FACTS

71: The number of points Berwick coach Craig Brodie scored on the Panthers last season as a coordinator for Franklin

7: The number of games Berwick was held to 10 points or fewer offensively in 2010

27: The years experience Berwick coach Craig Brodie brings in his first year on the job

Berwick quarterback Reed Leonard tosses a pass in warm ups. Leonard is one player first-year coach Craig Brodie said the Panthers will count on in their quest to improve last year’s 2-8 record. CASEY GISCLAIR