Before most of you were born, Istrouma High (BatonRouge) in the early 60's had football teams that could have played in Division 1AA. One year their offensive line outweighed LSU,s.
Byrd and Istrouma had some good games against each other in the 50's with many of them with state title implications.
1. The 1990 Ruston Bearcats. 14-0, District 3-4A Champions, crushed B.R.-Catholic in the Dome 52-10. Finished as high as #2 in some national polls. They were AWESOME! 2. The 1994 Haynesville Golden Tornado. Coach Red Franklin had some great teams, but this one was special. This was the team that crushed Evangel 62-7 with Josh Booty at QB, beat defending 5A state champs West Monroe AT West Monroe in their Homecoming, went 15-0 and destroyed every 2A team put in front of them. And they did this with 26 (yes I said 26) players. I saw them play. No 5A team could touch them. I wish they would've played up just so we would know how good they really were. Of course, they would be punted back down to 2A after winning too many titles if they did it today.
Istrouma had a dynasty in HS Football in the 50's and 60's coached by James "Big Fuzzy" Brown I think they won the state championship something like 10 out of 12 years, sort of like John "The Wizard of Westwood" Wooden's record at UCLA For at least a couple of those titles he had LSU's only Heisman winner Billy Cannon
Thanks BengalB, I moved to BR after graduating HS in Pennsylvania in '60 and started LSU. A friend of my dad's was a big Istrouma fan and started taking me to the games. For the life of me I could not remember the coach's name, but it was a very interesting time in HS football in BR. As I recall Istrouma's starting QB one year actually lived in Denham Springs! But they had some awesome teams. One year they went through their district without having a point scored against them. I forgot about Cannon. My dad's friend's daughter graduated from Istrouma the same year Cannon did. She said he was kind of a skinny kid until his senior year.
