Like so many other Lafayette young’uns, Stephen Morella savored his fall Saturdays at Cajun Field.

But he rarely sat in the stands, and perhaps less frequently knew the score between UL and whatever opponent it was facing.

“We would go to the games all the time,” Morella said. “But, I mean, when you’re young, you don’t really watch the game.”

Rather, the grassy end zone hill closest to the Ragin’ Cajun locker room was the place to be.

“It was always up and down the hill, playing, throwing the football, hoping it didn’t roll onto the field, just stuff like that, not so much paying attention to the game,” Morella said.

“Everybody would go,” he added. “That was the spot.”

One Cajun player after another would walk down the concrete tunnel leading from the locker room to the field before each game, and afterward they’d walk back it up, and all the time in between the kids not yet their age would run and slide and chase each other and play catch with nary a care to keep them down.

As they romped, countless among them imagined the day they too would walk down and up that tunnel.

Morella, however, was not one of them.

Yet there he will be Saturday, when in the final home game of his fifth year at UL the 4-6 Cajuns will play host to 6-4 Arkansas State needing two wins in their final two regular-season outings – also including a Dec. 3 trip to UL Monroe – to become bowl-eligible for the fifth time in six seasons.

“I don’t think I ever imagined it,” Morella said, “which is why I feel so lucky. I feel very lucky.”

This story, then, is not about the dream that always was.

Rather, it is a tale of what really is.

It was around the time of his junior season that Morella, then an undersized defensive end at Lafayette High, started to ponder the notion that perhaps he too could actually play for the Cajuns.

“Then it became somewhat of a reality,” he said. “But before then I never would have thought (it)… which is why I feel so blessed to have the opportunity.”

Even after that junior season, though, there was a road block.

He broke his leg during the ensuing summer, prompting multiple surgeries and about two years’ worth of recovery and rehab.

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Whatever speed Morella had that might have allowed him to play linebacker at UL or maybe a smaller school was sapped, so he decided to join the Cajuns – as a walk-on deep snapper.

It ultimately was an easy call.

“I didn’t want to go anywhere else,” Morella said. “I really wanted to be here, in Lafayette and at UL.”

It wasn’t until his third year in the program, however, that Morella actually played a game for the Cajuns.

The date was Aug. 20, 2014, and UL was playing host to Southern University in front of the third-largest crowd – 36,170 – to ever watch a game at Cajun Field.

Morella remembers everything about walking down the tunnel, on the leg he once snapped, and onto the field to face the Jaguars.

“I was so nervous I didn’t know what to do with myself – as I imagine a lot of people are their first collegiate play,” he said. “But that’s the fun thing about it. … All that emotion.

“I remember trying to absorb as much of what was going on around as I could.”

Loud music. Cheering fans. Screaming teammates.

He heard, and recalls, it all.

“I remember it was so new and so different that I just wanted to pick up every little thing about it that I could,” Morella said, “knowing there’s only a limited amount of time you can do that in life.

“So I wanted to pick up every little sensation abut that moment.”

With Morella snapping to holder Jake Guidry for a PAT and three made Hunter Stover field goals, UL beat Nevada 16-3 to win its fourth straight New Orleans Bowl at the end of that 2014 season.

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Time passed, and heading into the 2016 Morella was going to be both be snapping for Stevie Artigue on extra points and field goals and snapping to Steven Coutts on punts.

What made this season most-different than the prior two, however, is that in 2016 Morella has been toiling as a Cajun scholarship player.

“It was big,” Morella said of being awarded what he long had wanted.

“That’s been one of the goals since I started playing, and it didn’t come easy, you know? It was not easy. I know that. And I feel lucky to have gotten it. But it didn’t come easy.”

Did Morella mention it wasn’t easy?

He did indeed.

“But I’m very grateful for it,” Morella said.

Cajuns head coach Mark Hudspeth, who doubles as UL’s special teams, was glad he could finally give it.

The fact he did, however, wasn’t something Hudspeth mentioned to media members until just a few days ago.

“I’m gonna be proud (Morella on Saturday),” Hudspeth said, “because here’s a guy … that walked onto this football team, became the starting snapper, worked awfully hard, got put on scholarship his senior year, has been an integral part of our team.

“Those guys I love.”

Hudspeth began his own college career as a walk-on at NCAA Division II Delta State, and eventually earned some scholarship money.

“To see him (Morella) come as far as he has come,” the Cajun coach said, “has been real rewarding, along with rest of our seniors.”

On Saturday, he and UL’s other outgoing upperclassmen will make the walks – down for pregame warmups, up to the lockerroom, down to play, up for halftime, down again, up to peel off the pads – on one final  occasion with helmet and cleats.

For Morella, the experience – he suspects – will be bittersweet.

The grassy hill he once played on is gone now, recently replaced by about 6,000 new end zone seats.

The price of progress.

The kids all slide and roll and pass and play and hope now on the hill over the other Cajun end zone.

But the tunnel is still there.

“I think it will be a lot of emotion going on,” Morella said.

“It’s been a long ride. Playing in the same place so many times, I think it will be weird to go out there knowing this will be the last time ever.”

As he does, Morella probably will treat each and every step like he did those first few against Southern.

“I’d like to think I’m gonna try to do the same thing,” he said, “probably for a lot of the same reasons.

“That’s a very individualized moment. There’s not many things in life that happen like that, so I want to be present and absorb as much of that as I possibly can – because after that, that’s it.”