It’s no secret that, around these parts, football is king.

Folks here know there’s nothing quite like River Parishes football, what with the age-old rivalries, the ancient oaks covered in toilet paper, the jambalaya and hot wings.

It seems like everybody around here lives for football.

As long as it’s in the fall, that is.

Do all you football die-hard fans know that, on grassy knolls at high schools across the land, football is being practiced this month? Do you know the Louisiana High School Athletic Association grants coaches a whole 10 days of practice?

Does anybody care? Well, besides the coaches, that is.

West St. John football coach Brandon Walters is one of those guys who really gets into spring football.

“Oh I love it,” he said. “I love the smell of the grass, it always gets me excited. I went out and got my allergy medicine and everything. I’m ready.”

St. Charles Catholic coach Frank Monica is one who isn’t quite so excited, maybe just because he’s been around the track a few times more than others.

“It’s very hard, especially at a school like this,” Monica said, as he ticked off the number of activities he has to compete with this week for players.

“There’s baseball, track, golf, exams, graduations, proms,” he said. “There’s a lot to contend with.”

For most coaches, spring football is about counting numbers and filling holes left by graduation and what-not. That’s rather difficult to do when a dozen or so of your players are off doing something else.

As the Comets got things underway last week, the St. Charles golf team was in Carencro finishing as the state runner-up, the baseball team was prepping for its quarterfinal series against Menard and a couple of other athletes were vying for state titles in track.

Still, Monica had as many of his Comets as he could out on the practice field (but not the main field because the grass needs to rest) to get a jump on the next football season.

That’s not so easy when your projected starting quarterback, Lloyd Nash, is off playing baseball and making diving catches in the outfield

“We’ve got an eighth grader out there right now,” Monica said. “We don’t even put him under center. We have him in the (shot)gun, handing off.”

Down the road in Reserve, Riverside Academy coach Bill Stubbs was fighting the same battle.

“We’ve got about 10 or 12 of them still playing baseball,” said Stubbs, who pushed his start back to Monday of this week and then all those players earned themselves a trip to Sulphur anyway.

Like Monica, Stubbs has been missing his projected starting quarterback, Jordan Loving, who is with the Rebels baseball team hitting walk-off home runs. Stubbs also has a youngster doing the work under, er, behind center.

“He’s doing a fine job,” Stubbs said.

Stubbs said he used the spring workouts to figure out a team’s “personality.”

“I think that starts to happen in the spring,” he said. “We see how far we are, how fast we can get up to speed. The big thing is, a lot of fundamentals. We’re always known for how fundamentally sound we can be.”

For the newer guys, Walters and East St. John coach Aldon Foster, this spring is about continuing the process of putting their schemes in place.

“Not necessarily mine, but we certainly want to make sure we put a viable product on the field,” Walters said.

In addition to 10 days of practice, teams are allowed one scrimmage per spring. East St. John will face McDonogh 35 on May 17 at Pan American Stadium in New Orleans. The Comets will take on Terrebonne on May 19. West St. John will travel to Pan American Stadium on the 20th to play McMain. Riverside will stay home and have a couple of controlled intra-squad scrimmages.

Then, that spring chill in the air and the fall chill just aren’t the same, are they?

There won’t be any bands or cheerleaders, though, and probably no jambalaya.

Lori Lyons is sports editor of L’OBSERVATEUR. She can be reached at 985-652-9545 or lori.lyons@lobservateur.com.