Both the Rosepine and Leesville football teams are off to their best starts of late, and they’ll aim to keep the train rolling on the road this week.
The Eagles (4-0) won their first four games for the first time since 2021 with a chance to reach their fifth win at Class 1A Delhi (2-2).
The Wampus Cats (3-1) get a rematch with Many (1-3) on the road in an attempt to match 4-1 starts from 2022 and 2024.
Pickering starts off the football week Thursday at home as the Red Devils (1-3) hope to stop a three-game slide with Acadiana Christian visiting.
ROSEPINE
Rosepine has been dominant this season, and they’ll pack up the bus for their farthest road trip by far this season.
Delhi is a quaint town of 2,500 in northeastern Louisiana’s Richland Parish, not far from Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that features Native American mounds dating back to 3,400 years ago.
While historians and archaeologists aren’t entirely sure how the prehistoric inhabitants built the mounds without modern instruments (an aerial view reveals the mounds were in the shape of a bird), Rosepine’s reversal of fortune is far more concrete.
The Eagles are thrashing opponents both offensively and defensively with the 35-8 win against Oberlin being the second time Rosepine has held an opponent to single digits.
The Eagles are allowing an average of just 11 points season while eclipsing 35 points offensively in three of four games.
Second-year coach David Weldon said in the preseason that he felt his team would have a breakout year, and Rosepine could deliver its first 5-0 start since a 10-0 regular season in 2018.
Delhi has been similarly dominant at times this season, whipping opponents like Magnolia Charter (60-0) and Delhi Charter (26-2).
But the Bears have gotten handled by opponents with more seasoning, falling to Lincoln Prep (52-12) and North Vermilion (52-8).
LEESVILLE
Last year’s Leesville (3-1) bunch shrugged off a slow 1-5 start before heating up, but that’s a distant memory for the 2026 Wampus Cats.
Down 24-7 in the third quarter, Leesville scored three touchdowns in the game’s final 13 minutes, including two in the final three minutes, to pull off the comeback.
All three of those scores came via the pass as quarterback Trel Broom connected with Dylan Absher twice and Julius Brown once.
Brown (104 career catches) and Broom (5,325 yards) both rank third all-time in Leesville history in those respective categories, according to the Leesville Wampus Cat Football History Facebook page.
The one early win that the Wampus Cats did manage in 2025 came against Many, and Leesville will try to repeat that feat when they head to Sabine Parish.
It’s a Many bunch that’s had a surprisingly slow start themselves after reaching the second round of the playoffs in the second year of Tyler Hassell.
A 32-14 loss to Catholic-Pointe Coupee dropped the Tigers to 1-3.
While Many is young in many spots, including a freshman quarterback in Luke McCarty, Leesville fans will remember running back Daniel Thomas.
Thomas has topped the 200-yard mark in three of his first four games and will surely be the primary focus of the Leesville defense.
PICKERING
For a Red Devils (1-3) that entered the season with playoff hopes, Thursday’s home game against Acadiana Christian feels like a must win.
This past week’s game against Merryville felt like a relatively equal matchup in which we’d learn about Pickering’s progress, but the Panthers ran away with a 44-20 win.
Now Pickering gets an Acadiana Christian (1-3) group whose lone win came against Plain Dealing, who owns the state’s longest losing streak at 48 games.
It is an Acadiana Christian team that appears to be improving as its offense has tallied 60 points in its last two games after just six points in the first two.
Pickering’s 20 points scored this past week is its second highest this season, a facet in which they hope to build on against Acadiana Christian.
With Rosepine and Vinton taking two of the four remaining games on the schedule after this week, Pickering needs to start stacking wins (and power points).