Sideline shepherd led Comets to a perfect season

    The administration and teachers at St. Charles Catholic High School provide their students with a Christian doctrine that carries them through life.
    In turn, the football team has given something back to the LaPlace community and school – a reason to rejoice in their excellence.
    Led by their sideline shepherd, head coach Frank Monica, the Comets won their first LHSAA/State Farm Class 3A Prep Classic championship on Dec. 10 when they defeated Amite, 9-8, in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
    The victory by the fourth-lowest point total in Class 3A history put the finishing touches on a perfect 15-win season.
    Wherever Monica has coached, whether it be Lutcher, Jesuit, Tulane University or St. Charles Catholic, he has made football players better. I’ve said it publicly, echoing the feelings of Monica’s coaching peers: He is one of the best game-day coaches – if not the best – in Louisiana. I feel he is a college coach plying his trade at the high school level.
Success at all levels
    Since he arrived in LaPlace in 1997 when a large majority of the school’s student population was female, Monica planted the seeds for a winning environment for his boys.
    In his many years of coaching, Monica has experienced both sides of the championship scoreboard. His 1978 Lutcher team won the Class 3A title with a 13-1 season. His 2005 and 2006 Comet teams were Class 2A runners-up.
    The addition of four students moved St. Charles Catholic from Class 2A to 3A this year. The upgrade came at a time Monica had weaned a group of youngsters four years ago into one of the most proficient teams in any of the lower three football classes.
    They honored the mentor by giving him his 200th coaching victory, which put him in an elite class of Louisiana coaches that numbers 48.
    The milestone win came in the LHSAA regional round when the Comets handed Patterson its first loss of the season, 31-6. Monica now has 203 wins, which ties him with Tony Reginelli, the former Newman coach, and Westlake’s Max Caldarera.
A scare in 2010
    Monica was one of nine candidates for the vacant Nicholls State head coaching position in 2010, but the college chose Charlie Stubbs instead.
    In 2003, when Southeastern Louisiana University resurrected its football program after an 18-year hiatus, I felt the Hammond university would have done itself a favor by naming Monica instead of former Kentucky coach Hal Mumme to lead the school back onto the gridiron. Mumme used the position as a stepping stone to job back in the “big time,”  and after two years and a 12-11 record, Mumme headed off to New Mexico State. Hammond’s loss was LaPlace’s reprise. And as St. Charles Catholic’s athletic director, he has given the community a program to be proud of in all boys’ and girls’ sports. The teams have won and lost with grace and class.
    In the final run to the championship game, Monica said, “I want the players and community to experience this because they deserve a championship. Our football players deserve one for all they’ve been through.”
    Monica loves his athletes, but neither he nor his staff coddles them. Instead, he molded a defense that allowed fewer points during the regular season (25) than any of he other nine schools competing for state championships in the Classic.
    “We had a very solid defense that refused to lose,” he said. “They had a mental toughness about them and confidence, and they covered up whatever weak areas we might have had.”
    Monica’s demand for excellence has no boundaries. Just ask the River Parish football officials who shudder when their assignment secretary sends them to LaPlace. I think, if prodded, Monica could cite every rule in the book verbatim, and woe be the official who drops a flag on his team.  
    But that resolve, which he transmits to his team, enabled the Comets to survive defending champion Parkview Baptist’s early surge in a 24-21 semifinal round victory. And again, in the championship game against 12-1 Amite, the defense warded off every scoring threat the Warriors threw at them when victory could have been gained by either school.
    During that game, I was working as Press Box Coordinator for the LHSAA and the media covering the event. On several occasions I told my assistant, Mike Landry, during every Amite attempt to pull ahead, “They’re not going to score.”        I’m no soothsayer. I just knew that St. Charles Catholic’s defense would keep Amite out of the end zone, in which case the Warriors would be out of their comfort zone in attempting a field goal.
    During the regular season, the Comets had beaten eight opponents with losing records, yet the Louisiana Sports Writers’ Association kept them in the No. 1 position in its Class 3A Top 10 poll for nine weeks.
    And when the team’s two leading rushers, Tulane signee, Lazedrick Thompson and Marcus Hall, suffered injuries that sidelined them for several key games, Monica called on safety Jeffery Hall and reserve back Brandon Zimmer to fill in. They did so admirably.
    Hall returned for the championship game and was named  the MVP by the working press.       

    Ron Brocato can be reached at www.clarionherald.org.