By Lori Lyons
For a while there, folks might have needed a tracking map to keep tabs on Lester Ricard.
Sure, everybody knew him when he was a standout quarterback at Amite High, setting records and scoring touchdowns like nobody’s business and earning accolades as one of the best in the country. Parade Magazine found him and made him All-America. Then Nick Saban found him and made him an LSU Tiger.
But after a redshirt season at LSU, Ricard went on the move. He transferred to Tulane, where he was a three-year starter from 2004 to 2006, completing 538 of 954 passes for 6,608 yards and 55 touchdowns. After his graduation, he really became a nomad. There were stints in Jacksonville with the Jaquars, in Carolina with the Panthers, and then a trip to Edmonton with the Oilers of the Canadian Football League.
Ricard, a Louisiana man through-and-through, said Canada was no place for him.
“First of all, it was cold in June,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe up there.”
And other NFL teams were calling – the Bengals, the Browns, the Chargers. But Ricard had signed a contract.
“I was so naïve,” he said. “I thought an offer from the NFL automatically trumped the CFL, you know? But it wasn’t like that. By the time they finally did let me out of my contract three or four months later, all those other teams had closed their doors.”
Then one day, Ricard found himself pinned up against a wall in an Arena League game with the New Orleans Voodoo.
“I mean, the walls are padded and all, but they don’t move,” Ricard said. “And it hurt. And I’m there and I’m looking up at my mom and my dad and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? That’s it. I’m done. This is not the place for me.’”
But Ricard still had some searching to do.
He got a job on a survey crew, making more money than he had ever made.
“But I was empty,” he said. “There was just a hole the size of a football field inside me.”
Then he went to work as a youth advocate for the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, spending hours tracking down kids and sometimes driving them. Until, one day, an adult in a neighborhood pulled a gun on him.
“That was it for me,” Ricard said.
Then Ricard got a call from a buddy, Ryan Manale, the head coach at De La Salle. Soon, he was teaching high school Algebra and coaching football. And, suddenly, Ricard was found.
“That hole, that emptiness was gone. It was filled,” Ricard said. “Teaching and coaching, working with the kids — this is what I was meant to do. This is my calling.”
Soon, another team was calling. St. Martin’s Episcopal lured Ricard away from De La Salle last season to become its head coach. But he resigned in December after just one season with a 5-5 finish.
Then Ricard found himself as a substitute teacher at Hahnville, where head coach Nick Saltaformaggio found him. The two bonded over football, as well as similar styles. Both get very excited about the game. Neither needs much prodding to talk about football – or anything for that matter. And Hahnville had a hole to fill on its staff.
“We are very much alike,” Saltaformaggio said. “We’re like the same person. We believe a lot of the same things. We have the same priorities and a lot of the same coaching philosophies. I believe in coaching players, not plays. I even had a sign up in my office that said, ‘Start coaching players, stop coaching plays.’ Lester understood that immediately. He is like a jolt of energy around here. He was exactly what I needed. I needed someone who could come in and relate to the players.”
After a brief stint coaching defensive backs, Ricard was made offensive coordinator and entrusted to revamp Hahnville’s experiment with the triple option veer.
“You can say ‘bye bye’ to that,” Ricard said. “It’s going to be a whole new offense this year. We’re going to fit our scheme around our players and their strengths. It’s going to be very exciting.”
Ricard said he is ready to experience Class 5A football and River Parishes football, but he is especially excited to work with returning quarterback Mike Neal, who got off to such a promising start then missed much of last season with a broken collar bone.
“He is the guy,” Richard said. “He is the man. He’s got it.”
And Ricard plans to stick around a while to see it.
“I know Coach Salt,” Ricard said. “He’s going to coach until the day he dies. And when he does, I’m going to be there with a pooper scooper picking him up.”
Be the first to comment