UL Homecoming kicks off with family traditions in mind + Red Jackets & Sweethearts Reunions

Tim Buckley, Daily Advertiser, Oct. 27, 2013
Reprinted from yesterday’s posting.

The UL Homecoming Parade rolls down St. Mary Boulevard in this file photo. / The Daily Advertiser

Athletic Network Footnote: As part of their reunions, the Red Jackets and the Sweethearts will both participate in the Homecoming Parade. Watch for them. For more information on their reunions, click on the Ragin’ Cajuns Reunions and Special Events banner on the right of the news box at www.athleticnetwork.net  Congratulations to both of our spirit groups for returning home for Homecoming 2013.

Marcus Carter helped his son through the toughest of times, which began in the first half of the young man’s first game with the Ragin’ Cajuns.

Jay Hebert sensed all along where his boy would play, but wanted him to figure it on his own.

Quintin Thomas was ready to break things down at a moment’s notice, all for the sake of his kid.

Gerald Broussard was thrilled by his child’s college choice, which kept his family intact and back where it belongs, at home in Cajun country.

Each is a particularly pleased papa with extra reason to smile wide, especially this week.

After having played in games on Cajun Field themselves, some with more team success than others, watching their own sons represent the University of Louisiana at Lafayette holds special meaning for these men as they return for Saturday’s homecoming game against New Mexico State.

“It gives me chill-bumps,” Carter said of watching son Montrel Carter romp around the same stadium as he once did.

“I remember being extremely nervous about seeing him out there (the first time) — but it being a really proud moment,” added Hebert, father of fifth-year senior linebacker and special-teams contributor Andrew Hebert. “The last five years have gone by really fast for us. The program’s really changed a lot.”

Gone are days of sub-par seasons, ones just a game or two above .500 and years and years spent watching bowl games from the comfort of the couch.

UL, 5-2, takes a five-game winning streak into its nonconference meeting with the Aggies.

The Cajuns have gone 9-4 in back-to-back years since coach Mark Hudspeth arrived in time for the 2011 season, and they’ll take back-to-back New Orleans Bowl victories into what seems bound to be yet another year of bowling in 2013.

Marcus Carter suspected as much was in the works when, while advising Montrel on college options, he researched Hudspeth, whose NCAA Division II teams at North Alabama were perennial postseason participants.

“I told him … ‘I really think these guys are gonna be good,’ ” Carter said. “I saw (Hudspeth) was a proven winner, and I had a good feeling he was gonna turn this thing around.”

Hudspeth has, and now the legacy their kids and their Cajun teammates are enjoying the fruits.

Carter, Hebert, Thomas, and Broussard aren’t alone among current UL football players whose fathers have athletic ties to the university.

Reserve linebacker Kevin Fouquier’s father, also named Kevin, is an ex-Cajun walk-on and student coach who later worked as UL’s defensive coordinator from 2007-10. Tight end Evan Tatford, sitting out this season after transferring from Tulane, is the son of Leander Tatford, who played for the Cajuns from 1973-76. Receiver Devin Figaro’s father, Kevin Figaro, was a standout UL basketball player.

All have bonds to a program that means so much to those within it, especially fathers whose sons are retracing footsteps.

Their path leads from the Cajun locker room, down a tunnel and onto the field of a soon-to-be-expanded stadium that holds 31,000.

“We talked about what it was like to come down the tunnel and Cajun Field, and just to be a part of that,” Broussard, an ex-Cajun assistant who has coached at multiple schools, said of conversations with his son about playing for the Cajuns.

“He was pretty much raised in the athletic complex,” Broussard said about son John. “He’s been in the locker room, he’s been in the equipment room. But Cajun Field has such a unique feel to it. The tunnel: It’s dark. It’s dungy. Then you go down there, and all of a sudden, boom, you open up to the field — and it’s just neat.”

Thomas knows the walk well.

He’s made it, and now he sees Sean Thomas — a starting safety – making it as well.

Quintin’s perspective these days is from the field, where football-playing UL alums gather for pregame activities.

“It’s a proud moment that, ‘Hey, I’m here as a former player.’ But also, ‘I’m here to watch my son play,’ ” Thomas said. “It kind of gets me a little emotional all over again.”

“Since he’s an alum … he gets to see me run out of the tunnel in the smoke, enjoy the fans, the Cajun walk,” Sean Thomas added. “You can tell he’s glad I’m still playing football.”

A tough start

It was Sept. 1, 2012, and Montrel Carter had started at running back in UL’s season-opening win over Lamar.

On his sixth rush, a knee gave way. His ACL was torn, and there was other damage. Reconstructive surgery would follow.

“It was real, real, real rough on us,” Marcus Carter said. “I mean, I buried my father (the prior March).”

Fred Carter Jr. was a football coach for 31 years, and a former All-American at Alcorn State.

“And I come down for the first game, and my son blows out his knee,” Marcus said. “It was a tremendous blow.”

Now, though, Montrel Carter is back — and his father has returned to the stands, something he calls “unfamiliar territory” after starting his own college career at LSU, finishing it at UL in 1993 and having NFL dreams curtailed when he was waived by the Seattle Seahawks in 1994.

And as he sat in his Cajun Field seat watching a UL win over Nicholls State earlier this season, Marcus Carter couldn’t help but giggle.

Nor could those around him.

“Montrel had a carry,” said Marcus, a receiver who had 53 catches for 801 yards and five touchdowns on team that went 8-3 and won a share of the ’93 Big West championship.

“The (public-address) announcer said, ‘Marcus Carter on the carry.’ Then he said, ‘Oh, correction, Montrel Carter on the carry.’ The whole crowd laughed … That was so funny. I hope it didn’t bother Montrel.”

It didn’t.

“He laughed it off too,” Marcus said. “But it was so hilarious.”

Carter smiled, too, when he learned what number Montrel wanted to wear at UL.

It’s the same one, No. 3, Marcus wore both in high school and as a Cajun.

And it can still be seen in framed photos in his boyhood room, up in Mansfield, at the house of his mother, Bettie Carter, a sixth-grade math teacher for 46 years.

“That’s another chill-bump experience,” Marcus Carter said. “He said, ‘Dad, I think I’m gonna wear 3 in college.’ I was like, ‘For real? That would be awesome, man.’ ”

Yes, for real.

“He was really, really happy when he found out,” Montrel said.

Montrel had to wait a short while, however, before it was available.

“When he first called me and told me, ‘Dad, I got that No. 3,’ ” Marcus said, “I was like, ‘Wow.’ ”

Goosebumps, again.

Twice as nice

Andrew Hebert was not told where to go.

Nor did he need to be.

“You know, I always wanted him to find his own way,” said Jay Hebert, recalling when son Andrew was being recruited.

“I said, ‘Just let him go, and let him find his own way. He’ll eventually get there. I’ll get him there. But I want him to make his own his decisions.”

It really was meaningful, though, when Andrew committed to the Cajuns.

Actually, it was twice as meaningful.

“It was definitely something we were extremely happy with,” Jay’s twin brother, Jed Hebert, said.

“It was very special to see him in that uniform (the first time), and to be a part of it — being able to go down on the field, and watch him.”

The twin Heberts played for UL from 1983-86, on teams that twice won four games and twice won six.

“What’s different about me is I didn’t have one ‘Dad’ trying to push me,” Andrew said. “I had two growing up. My Uncle Jed.”

The Heberts share a driveway in the Lafayette Parish community of Milton.

“He’s on the right, we’re on the left,” said Andrew, a Teurlings Catholic product.

“Jed was very, very instrumental in Andrew and his development and his mindset. And he always brought something different to the table than I did,” Jay Hebert added. “Andrew seemed to listen … He was getting it from a different perspective, and it worked out that way. He understood it. And it was great. Not just from a football standpoint, but from a life standpoint.”

On days father and son “didn’t always see eye-to-eye,” Jay said, “he’d go next-door and get some answers.”

The question of whether to become a Cajun, however, never really had to be asked. That answered was assumed, and correctly so.

“Since I was a little kid,” Andrew said, “we’ve tailgated together out there. It’s always Teurlings football on Fridays, UL on Saturdays. That’s all I knew growing up. It was pretty much understood I was coming here.

“I kind of always knew. It was always so special to them, and what they did at their time being here. The stories you hear. You just want to be a part of something special like they had.”

Not that many of those tales are fit to print.

“Every time you hear them, they get a little better,” Andrew said.

Playing in front of the home crowd came with pressure for Andrew at first. Not anymore.

“It just becomes fun, because you are a part of their legacy, and you’re adding your own,” he said. “I hope maybe one day my son will do the same thing.”

‘This is where his family is’

John Broussard didn‘t spend his growing up years in Lafayette, but he knew all along it was where he wanted to be.

“We had talked about where he wanted to go to college, whether or not athletics came into play,” Gerald Broussard said. “Having moved around as much as we did, it was just nice to hear him say he wanted to come to Lafayette.”

Gerald Broussard, who now works in the oil well sales industry and moonlights as a Cajun football radio analyst, was employed at the time as offensive coordinator at Stephen F. Austin in Texas.

Broussard, who lettered in the early 1980s under coach Sam Robertson, worked as a UL graduate assistant and for 13 seasons as an assistant coach for Nelson Stokley from 1986-98.

He later returned to UL as an assistant under Rickey Bustle from 2008-10, allowing John to finish high school at his alma mater – Lafayette High.

In between, he held coaching jobs at programs also including Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College, Tennessee-Martin and McNeese State.

Making things sweeter are Broussard’s ties, and those of his wife Julie, to the area.

“John’s an only child,” Broussard said, “and this is where his family is.

“He went to first grade here; second grade in Phoenix; third grade in Tennessee; fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade in Lake Charles; eighth, ninth, 10th grade in Nacogdoches, Texas. Then he comes back to school here, and finally people could pronounce his name correctly. That was a good thing for him.”

John sure felt that, even amid all the moves.

“If you asked him, ‘Where are you from?’ ” Gerald said, “he would say, ‘Lafayette.’ ”

Which is why John Broussard found it so easy to think UL even before the family returned from Texas to Louisiana.

He recalls the dinner talk when Gerald disclosed he had a job offer to return to the Cajun coaching staff.

“He said, ‘What would you think about going back to Lafayette?’ I got excited. That’s home,” John said. “That’s where my grandparents are, and my mom’s parents are down the road in Ville Platte. Seeing his face about going back — it was pure joy.

“He loves this place. They’ve treated him right, and he’s treated everybody right around here. Knowing he’s made an impact makes me want to do something better.

“He wasn’t going to pressure me to play football, he wasn’t going to do anything,” John added. “But to know I was coming (to UL) definitely made him excited.”

Hometown hero

The college-selection situation was a bit different for Thomas, from St. Augustine High in New Orleans, and Carter, a local product from Cecilia High.

They were, ahem, encouraged to attend UL.

On one hand, Marcus Carter — now a supervisor working with Down’s syndrome-afflicted adults in Shreveport — said he told his son, “ ‘Wherever you go, I’m gonna support you.’ ”

On the other hand …

“I told Montrel, ‘If you stay there, in Lafayette, you can be a hometown hero.’ ”

Montrel listened.

Thoughts on choosing UL weren’t Marcus Carter’s only advice for Montrel.

“I told him, ‘Go to class, son.’ That’s the main thing,” he said.

The right decision

Prior to being asked to pay an official visit to the Cajuns, Thomas also had a visit scheduled with rival UL Monroe, where his cousin, Jyruss Edwards, is a senior running back for the Warhawks.

It was nice that there was a familiar face there. But rivalries are rivalries.

“I said, ‘Son, if it comes down to ULM and (UL) at the last — I’m not gonna be a big proponent of ULM,’ ” Quintin Thomas said. “So do we really need to take that visit?’ ”

Clearly, according to his dad, Sean Thomas made the right decision.

“The look on his face when Coach (Hudspeth) said he was gonna give me the scholarship — he was just like, ‘Son, we did it,’ ” Sean said. “It was more of a my-son’s-going-to-college type thing. The fact I was playing football was a bonus.”

Nowadays, Quintin always sends Sean a game-day text, whether the Cajuns are home or away.

“It’s about the positive side — what to prepare for,” Quintin said.

“He doesn’t really brag too much on all his glory days,” Sean added. “But he’ll remind me sometimes when I step on the field. He’ll just tell me, when (those) lights come on, how to be a prime-time player.”

Thomas, who grew accustomed to making defensive calls and adjustments as an undersized outside linebacker at UL from 1984-86, also was a graduate-assistant coach for the Cajuns.

Because he did live it, Thomas can fully appreciate what his son experiences now.

“I said (to Sean), ‘I know everything you’re doing. I know where you’re lining up, where you’re at. I can understand a little bit more,’ ” said Thomas, now a brand sales and marketing rep for a brewing company in New Orleans. “ ‘I’m not just the average fan, where you jump up for good plays. I also know what formation you’re in. I know if you’re in man (coverage) and if you’re in zone.’ ”

The fathers and sons all seem to bond over what takes place on the field.

But when Montrel Carter couldn’t play, it was still his dad he turned to.

To help Montrel deal with his damaged knee last season, Marcus said there was “prayer, and a lot of talking … Sometimes we would cry on the phone,” he said.

“The one thing that bothered him the most: His phone didn’t ring as much no more. Nobody called him. Everybody (before) was like, ‘Hey, Montrel, you’re the man, you’re the man, you’re the superstar.’ Then he blew his knee out. The team would leave, and he would text me.

“I remember last year, when (the Cajuns) almost beat Florida. Montrel texted during the game and he said, ‘Dad, I’m so hurting. I wish I could be out there for my teammates right now,” Carter said. “As a father, what do I come back with?”

Right away, Marcus — who knows what it takes to play the game — managed words of comfort and encouragement.

“I told him, ‘Your time will come, Montrel … Your day will come. When they call your number, just be ready,” he said.

The No. 3, that would be.

Now Montrel is back where he belongs, on the field, preparing for a homecoming game.

“He was down,” Marcus Carter said. “But he’s bounced back, and he’s in high spirits now.”