Young Gators eager for more after last year’s playoff push
August 30, 2012
Vandebilt has a simple goal: Undefeated season
August 30, 2012
Terrebonne started last season slow and struggled to a 1-4 record due to inexperience and injuries.
Once healthy, they rallied and salvaged a 5-5 season.
This year, the objective is to take the second half of 2011 into the new year.
With momentum on their side, Terrebonne believes it has everything in place to make a push to the top-tier of the Bayou District standings.
“We’re trying to build on the way that we finished,” quarterback Colby Stewart said. “We’re really excited to start playing and I think that once the adrenaline starts pumping again, we’ll pick up where we left off and the sky is the limit.”
Offensively, Terrebonne returns five starters from 2011, but none come from the skill positions.
Stewart will be the Tigers’ quarterback, but this is the first year he plays the position in high school.
A converted receiver, even he admits that he’s learning the position day-by-day.
“It’s a different transition,” Stewart said. “Having to lead the team and be there for all of the guys both on and off the field – that’s something that I love, but it’s something that I’m getting used to.”
In a perfect world, Stewart would be throwing to polished, three-year starters at receiver.
He isn’t.
The Tigers do not have a single returning starter at that position.
“All of our skill guys are new,” Terrebonne coach Gary Hill said. “Colby is a returner, but he’s playing a whole new position, so he’s like everyone else – he’s starting over.”
“We’re not as good at the passing side of the offense right now,” Stewart said. “It will progress as the year goes on, but that’s not who we are right now.”
What the Tigers “are” is a run-based team that returns four of their five offensive linemen from last year’s group that meshed late in the season.
But arguably Terrebonne’s biggest returnee comes in its backfield.
After taking 2011 off, senior DeShaun Diggs will return to the Tigers and will serve as the team’s halfback.
As a sophomore in 2010, Diggs wowed the area with an array of speed, elusiveness and power.
Stewart said Diggs has been anything but rusty in summer drills.
“He’s just an amazing player,” the quarterback said. “Everything he brings to the table is just awesome. We can just give the ball to him and just trust that he’ll do good. When you combine him with the fact that almost all of our linemen are back, we really believe that our running game has a chance to be dominant.”
“He brings so much speed,” senior defensive lineman and linebacker Jeremiah Thomas agreed. “And we have a lot of big people in front of him blocking, too, so look out.”
Terrebonne’s defense is molded similarly to its offense – five returning starters with most coming on the front line – a unit anchored by Thomas and junior linebacker Storm Chauvin.
Thomas said the focus for the Tigers’ defense in 2012 is to cause chaos.
With so many big bodies back, the linebacker said the team wants to bully its opponents in the trenches.
“We want to be physical,” Thomas said. “As a group, we all got faster and we all got bigger and stronger. We really think that we will be able to get to the ball and make our mark.”
The one hole in Terrebonne’s defensive arsenal is in the defensive backfield, where the team is inexperienced.
Hill said that group is a work in progress, but he added that he believes the Tigers will be more than capable of learning on the fly and creating stops throughout the season.
“I think we’re going to be able to play some decent football on that side of the football, as well,” the coach said.
Like everyone else in the Bayou District, Terrebonne is trying to rise to the top of the standings amidst Westgate and New Iberia’s dominance in 2011.
Hill said he believes the district is wide open and anyone will be able to win any game on a given Friday.
He believes the key for his team is overcoming early youth and avoiding the same poor start that plagued the team last year.
“If our young kids gel and learn how to play the game at this level and at this speed then yes, we believe we can have a really successful season,” Hill said. “That’s the plan.”
“I don’t think it’ll happen to us again,” Thomas said. “We plan to come out smoking. I think we’ll be ready from day one.”
Terrebonne High School standouts Jeremiah Thomas (left) and quarterback Colby Stewart pose for a photo before practice. The Tigers want to take last season’s fast start into 2012.
