HLB coach resigns after 2-year tenure

The H.L. Bourgeois football team will have a first-year coach once the fall season rolls around.

The outgoing coach wasn’t fired, but is instead leaving on his own will – a decision he’s making to be closer to his wife and kids.

Braves head football coach Daron Franklin announced this week that he has resigned from his post after coaching the team for the past two seasons.

Under Franklin’s watch, H.L. Bourgeois posted a 2-18 record. But that mark isn’t indicative of the progress the team made with Franklin at the helm. Under his watch, the Braves’ roster numbers grew and the team’s competitiveness skyrocketed. After a winless first season in 2013, the 2014 version of the Braves posted a 2-8 record, including a season-ending victory over rival Terrebonne.

Franklin is a New Orleans native who has a home in the city. He said the decision was tough, but at the end of the day, he needed to coach at a school closer to home.

“The driving force behind this decision was my family,” Franklin said. “I travel a long distance every day and I’m away from my wife and my kids quite a bit. I have two young kids in elementary school and it’s been challenging – especially this year – to be able to get them to school and out of school and different things like that. It

wasn’t easy. I love (HLB) and I love the kids, but it’s just a family decision. It’s something that I had to do.”

Probably the biggest contribution Franklin made to the Braves’ program is hope – a renewed confidence within the entire program that H.L. Bourgeois football can be successful.

During his two years with the team, Franklin coached with tireless passion, making countless efforts to change the mindset of his players, many of whom had endured several-straight losing seasons with the team.

Franklin created a new mindset and mentality for the program, which he called “Bravelife.” That slogan symbolized the commitment, sacrifice and effort that the team’s coaches and players needed to dedicate to the team to turn the program and return H.L. Bourgeois to the winner’s circle.

Students and administration within the school bought into the program’s rebranding, and the Braves’ roster grew during both of Franklin’s seasons.

“This will be something that I will always remember and a job that I will always be grateful for,” Franklin said. “I want to thank our principal Mr. (Matthew) Hodson for having the courage to take a chance on me and giving me the opportunity to develop a program for the first time as a head coach. When I came here, I knew we had athletes. It just took some time for the kids to develop some confidence and for them to develop some strength. We’ve come a long way and it’s because the kids, the parents and the community really bought into what we were doing.”

“We love coach Franklin,” Braves’ halfback Ritney Coleman added during the season. “He’s given us so much belief in what we’re doing.”

In Franklin’s first season, the Braves finished 0-10, which extended the school’s losing streak to 30-plus games. But after a full offseason of conditioning and a set of spring and summer practices, the Braves bounced back in the coach’s second season and were a far better football team in 2014, posting two wins.

Franklin coached the team past its losing streak on Sept. 13 when the Braves pushed past Ellender 26-22 to snap a 33-game losing streak.

H.L. Bourgeois doubled up and got another win on Nov. 7 when they topped cross-parish rival Terrebonne 26-21 on Nov. 7 to close the season – a game that will now go down as Franklin’s final with the team.

The coach said he believes that H.L. Bourgeois’s next coach will inherit a talented, confident roster that is capable of competing in the Bayou District.

If Franklin had stayed, he said that the team had already set its goal for the next year.

“We thought that we were going to be a team that could make a run for the playoffs,” Franklin said. “They have a good group of kids coming back who have a lot of experience playing on Friday nights. I think that they will be very successful next season. That’s what makes it so hard, because I definitely didn’t want to walk away from those kids.”

Franklin said he will remain with H.L. Bourgeois for the rest of the academic year. He said he has received interest from several schools in New Orleans.

“There aren’t any head coaching jobs available to me right now, but I have gotten a good bit of calls from people who heard the news and are asking me if I’d be interested in being an assistant at their school and different things like that,” Franklin said. “No decision has been made. We’ll just see how it goes.”

‘The driving force

behind this decision was my family…’

Daron Franklin

Outgoing HLB head football coach

HLB coach resigns after 2-year tenure