Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
When its already small football team was taken over by illnesses and injuries during the 2022 season, Vinton High School came close to losing its football program. "This team was struggling to finish a football season — a full schedule — due to lack of interest in the program, as well as a lot of key injuries to personnel, which was making it really tough for us to compete for four quarters at this level," Vinton High School Head Football Coach Tyler LaVergne said. "Since then, we've come a long way." After the team finished the 2022 season with a 1-8 record, LaVergne was promoted to head coach for the 2023 season. While the 2023 season wasn’t much better win-wise, with the Lions having a 1-9 record, in 2024 they came back and had their first winning regular season, 6-4, in a decade. However, the team lost 40-42 against Montgomery High School in the first postseason game. "Last year, (we) really started seeing success, because everybody was hungry and we were tired of just losing, and it really made us upset when we go on the field on the field on Friday and (see) our stands half empty," Vinton High School senior Jaidon Briggs said. "So, this year, I'm excited to see everybody come in and celebrate and enjoy the football game like old school football." With one game left in the 2025 season, the Vinton Lions have already locked in a winning season with their 7-2 record. "We really restructured the program and got creative when it comes to how to get kids to buy in," LaVergne said. "It took a lot of work, a lot of preparation, a lot of effort from our coaching staff and our administrators and just our school student body as a whole buying into the success of our football program." LaVergne said that a big part of rebuilding the team includes selling the sport of football to the school’s athletes. In fact, he said that recruiting players feels like being a used-car salesman when trying to get students to go out and see if football is for them. "The thing is, nowadays a lot of people are so specialized in these different sports, and played baseball their entire life and never picked up a football before, and getting them to come out and try it, " LaVergne said. "Actually, for a lot of our guys who have never played football before high school, this seems to be one of their more favorite sports now, and they understand that it doesn't take years of preparation in order to be successful with football. It's kind of just one of those things where you can pick up and anybody can play it, as long as you're coachable and you play fast, you can have a lot of success in this sport." Both LaVergne and Briggs believe that the team's success in the 2024 and 2025 seasons is due to its culture and determination. Briggs, a running back and defensive lineman, said he believes the culture shift has come with LaVergne taking over as head coach. "He's really teaching us not just to be good football players but to be good men, also just a hunger to compete," Briggs said. "Some teams, some of the schools in the area, you go to their school and their freshmen are just like, blocking dummies, but here, the JV and the varsity compete, and we just want to get better for Friday night." Vinton High School Junior Kortlin Kyle, a linebacker and right guard, said that the team being able to prove something to themselves has been a key to its success.
