By GEORGE MAHL

The 2002 high school football season officially ended Saturday night with Evangel High School destroying West Monroe High School 35-4 in the Class 5A title game.

Other teams such as Port Barre and Redemptorist also won championships. RHS defeated Patterson for the 3A title and Port Barre was too much for Iota to handle in claiming the 2A title. Ironically, all of the teams I have mentioned had to defeat River Parishes schools in the playoffs in order to achieve their goal.

This makes St. James, Riverside, West St. John, and Destrehan look even better. All four head coaches can look back on their seasons and realize their squads lost in the playoffs to teams that eventually won it all.

In fact, the River Parishes teams played better against the state champs than the teams in the Superdome did. DHS played tough against a high-powered Evangel offense losing 28-21 in the final minutes of the contest. The Fighting Wildcats may have even gone on to the state championship had they beaten the Eagles in late November.

Port Barre had to defeat the Riverside Academy Rebels in order to make it to the title tilt. The Red Devils knew they were in a tough game when escaping with a 23-8 victory over RA on Dec. 6. They went on to defeat an overmatched Iota team 26-7 for the title.

The West St. John Rams were one point away from defeating the eventual state-runnerup. I saw that some Rams fans were outraged at how the WSJ-IHS game ended, but I spoke to some well-respected coaches in the area and they told me they would have done the same thing and gone for the win with a two-point conversion if they were in coach Laury Dupont’s shoes.

Lastly, Redemptorist got the 3A title by pounding Patterson 31-19. This is the same RHS club that played a thrilling 30-21 game with St. James in Vacherie. I even remember a friend of mine telling me in the pressbox, “This is really for the 3A title.”

The bottom line is that the road to the Louisiana Superdome and the state championships ultimately passed through the River Parishes. This scenario is a true testament to the high level of prep football played and coached here in our area.

Let’s hope next season the same thing happens but with different results for our schools.

GEORGE MAHL is a sportswriter for L’Observateur. He may be reached at 985-652-9545 or lobnews@bellsouth.net.