Aug 16, 2021
Cross Country Head Coach Tim Spruill is beginning his second year in the program. After a first season in which his program saw continual improvement, he is looking for bigger and better things this year.
“Our number one goal this season is to increase the size of the teams to allow for a better breakdown by ability within the teams,” said Coach Spruill. “Athletes need comparable athletes to train with in order to grow. Right now we have too much diversity and too few athletes to allow diversification.”
While the size of the team is important, Coach Spruill did not forget to stress that he looks for his team to get better.
“The number two goal is to see someone break the boys and girls school records for our sport,” added Spruill.
Carolina Alvarado is the returning captain for the Lady Panthers, and seems to be the most likely candidate to achieve the second goal. Alvarado was consistently the Lady Panthers’ highest finisher last season.
Joining her this season are two newcomers that Coach Spruill has been impressed with in the early part of the season. Jaden Sylvester is joining us from football and baseball.
“Jaden brings a can-do attitude, a smile, and a ton of grit. He will be a great addition to the team,” said Spruill.
Kennedi Kullman is a freshman that Coach Spruill pointed to as a possible contributor as well.
The Panthers are excited about traveling to diverse meets this season. The unpredictable courses are fun and vary from their home course.
Over the past two years, the Cross Country program has worked a lot on consistent training and positive attitudes. This season looks to be the best yet in both regards, and fast times are expected for this group.
Aug 13, 2021
As the fall sports seasons at Woodlawn High begin, the Woodlawn Lady Panther Volleyball Team will be the first to take the courts. The Lady Panthers are looking to improve on last year’s 9-9 record in a season that was full of setbacks and delays.
Long-time Head Coach Nelson Malpica looks for leadership from six returning Lady Panthers. Leading the way is Junior Reagan McDowell, who was named to the 2020 All-District Team. Reagan will be joined by juniors Elyse Pitts and Marie Sierra, who look to add valuable experience to the Lady Panthers.
Senior Isabella Schamber and sophomores Branderia Graham and Kelis Conley are also expected to lead the Lady Panthers in the early parts of the season as other players gain experience.
“We need to work on improving early in the season, and hopefully peak in the playoffs,” said Malpica. “At the varsity level, we do not have a lot of depth aside from the six players we discussed. We will need others to step up on the varsity level.”
Coach Malpica looks to a talented freshman class, led by Lacie Sierra, to perhaps contribute early.
“Lacie played club and has experience from Woodlawn Middle. We think she can contribute very early in the season.”
The Lady Panthers are once again hosting two tournaments at Woodlawn. The Southland Invitational will be held September 3rd and 4th. The Rumble in the Jungle will be held September 24th and 25th. Outside of the tournaments, the Lady Panthers are looking forward to their District schedule as they look to improve from last year’s playoff experience.
The Lady Panthers will be on the court for the first action of the season in a scrimmage on Saturday, August 14th at 9 am. All tickets must be purchased online.
Season tickets can be purchased for the Lady Panthers by clicking here.
May 20, 2021
You Can’t Go Home Again. Not only is this the title of one of Thomas Wolfe’s most memorable works, it has also become a well-known and common phrase. However, Alicia Dedeaux is ignoring this advice and doing the exact opposite: Coming Home.
Woodlawn High School is excited to announce that Dedeaux has been named the head coach of the girls’ basketball team. In addition to her duties as head basketball coach, she will take on the role of PE teacher.
Dedeaux, a native of Baton Rouge, graduated from Woodlawn High School. She was a star-athlete during her time as a Panther, participating in basketball, softball, cross country, and tennis. She was recognized as an All-District and All-Metro basketball player.
“Timing is everything. To be able to return home to your Alma Mater as a head coach and former student-athlete is very special,” explained Dedeaux. “I desire to bring back Panther Pride through fostering healthy relationships with colleagues, parents, students, and the community. Together we can meet students where they are and ensure that they are able to continue to excel both academically and athletically.”
“I’m ecstatic to be back and looking forward to helping young ladies to reach their full potential on and off the court.”
Dedeaux has spent the last 16 years in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. After beginning her career as a head coach in Jackson, Mississippi, Dedeaux was named the head coach of the girls’ basketball program at Lee High School (now Liberty Magnet High School).
In the fall of 2009, Dedeaux was named the head coach of the girls’ basketball program at Glen Oaks High School. After spending one year at Glen Oaks, she was named the Athletic Director. Dedeaux has remained in both roles at Glen Oaks since that time.
“I think we have hired a high-quality, high-character coach to run our girls’ basketball program,” said Elmo Fernandez, Woodlawn High’s Athletic Director. “Coach Dedeaux comes to us with a great deal of experience and she has a proven record.”
Dedeaux resides in Baton Rouge with her husband and two children. She can be reached via email at [email protected].
May 12, 2021
For the first time in the school’s history, Woodlawn High School has claimed the 4×200 Meter Relay 5A State Championship.
The team of J’Marcus Sewell, Jordan Matthews, Lanard Harris, and Jay’veon Haynes out raced the field at Saturday’s LHSAA/Allstate Sugarbowl Class 5A Track and Field Meet. The team won the District Championship at Catholic High on April 22nd with a time of 1:27.90. On April 29th, the Panthers ran a 1:26.99 at the LHSAA Region II Meet, which put them second in the Region and the State behind Zachary.
However, the Panthers did not let the underdog status deter them. After the second leg of the relay, the Panthers found themselves in fourth place, behind Ruston, Zachary, and Dutchtown. It was at that point that senior Lanard Harris received the stick. Harris made up the deficit, and put anchor Jay’veon Haynes in a virtual tie with Zachary going into the final 200 meters.
Haynes did the rest of the work, out-sprinting the other competitors to the finish line. The final time of 1:26.14 shaved nearly a second off of their time at the Regional Meet. The time ranked the Panthers as the fastest 4×200 Meter Relay team in the state of Louisiana this season, and also placed them as the 17th fastest time in the nation!
In addition to the 4×200 Meter Relay, Harris placed second in the two individual events in which he qualified. Harris ran the 110 Meter Hurdles in 13.95, which was a PR in the event. In the 300 Meter Hurdles, Harris ran a time of 36.91. Any other year, that time would have not only made Harris the State Champion, but also the state Composite Record Holder. Unfortunately, the gold medal winner from Ouachita ran a 36.42. Both times broke the previous record of 37.40 from 2007. Harris’ time in the 110 Meter Hurdles ranks him 17th in the nation, and his 300 Meter Hurdle times ranks him eighth.
Sewell was also able to score points for the Panthers at the State Meet. As the only sophomore running against eight seniors, Sewell came in fifth with a time of 10.63.
With only four athletes, Woodlawn High finished seventh out of 38 teams who scored points.
The Panthers return a solid core of track athletes for the 2022 season. Student-athletes who are interested in participating in track should contact Athletic Director Elmo Fernandez at [email protected] or Kristin Guidry at [email protected].
May 12, 2021
Coby Sanchez is a 2019 graduate of Woodlawn High School. This article was originally published in the Spring 2021 Southeastern Magazine. The article was written by Sheri Gibson and photos are by Randy Bergeron. You can see the original article by clicking here.
Southeastern student Coby Sanchez has turned a fear of storms into a passion for understanding them and sharing information to help others—becoming “Southeastern’s first meteorologist.”
When Southeastern freshman and Baton Rouge native Coby Sanchez was a small child, storms were the boogeyman. As the wind roared and the tinny sound of rain reverberated off the windows and roof, little Coby would become more and more frightened, the outside world seeming to slide into dangerous, uncontrollable chaos. “Momma, I don’t want there to be a tornado!” he would cry inconsolably.
Then in 2008, Coby experienced a storm that would forever change his life: Hurricane Gustav. Gustav tore across Hispaniola, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba before making landfall in the U.S. near Cocodrie, Louisiana, as a category two hurricane. It lashed the Gulf Coast, creating about $6 million (in 2008 dollars) in damages in the U.S., 1.5 million power outages in Louisiana alone, and a spark in one local boy who lived through it.
After hours of white-knuckled fear, watching towering trees fall and roofs ripped off of homes, the pounding rain and roaring winds finally subsided—and Coby knew that if he were to ever conquer his biggest fear, he would have to better understand it. Eventually, instead of cowering from storms, he would seek them out, chasing them and studying their mysteries. No longer just to put himself at ease, and above even an unquenchable thirst for more knowledge, his ultimate mission has evolved to help others better prepare for and survive the wrathful monsters that so terrified him as a child.
Coby Sanchez
“The importance of studying storms and meteorology to me is saving lives,” said Coby. “As humans, we’re curious about nature. We want to have a visual within a storm to see what’s going on, what’s happening. But being prepared and preparing other people, residents in cities and states that will be impacted, that’s the whole point of meteorology. Because these are dangerous storms. They can take lives. I’d love to help prevent that.”
Over the ensuing years, Coby has pursued countless storms, from riding them out and investigating their aftermath to studying their characteristics and patterns from afar. While still in high school, he even received certification as a National Weather Service (NWS) SKYWARN® storm spotter, a program that, according to NWS, allows volunteers to “help keep their local communities safe by providing timely and accurate reports of severe weather to the National Weather Service.” He additionally shares the information that he gathers as a certified member of the Spotter Network.
Coby plans to one day turn his passion for storm chasing into his career, informing mass audiences by becoming a meteorologist and television weatherman, hopefully even following in the footsteps of renowned Weather Channel on-camera meteorologists like Jim Cantore and Tevin Wooten. So when it came time to begin choosing a college, the opportunities presented by Southeastern and the Southeastern Channel—winner of over 400 awards since its inception in 2002 and the only university channel in Louisiana to have ever won an Emmy, let alone have done it 20 times—immediately caught his attention. The Southeastern Channel has won first place in the nation 11 times at the National Student Production Awards given by College Broadcasters, Inc. and has been named “Best Television Station in the South” eight times by the Southeast Journalism Conference. Southeastern’s strong reputation of caring was also a plus for Coby.
“I heard a lot of great things about Southeastern,” said Coby. “At Southeastern, in my experience, they care. They definitely care to help and better you as a student and as a person for the future.”
Along with this, he recognized how the Southeastern Channel would be a perfect fit with his career goals. “After college, I’d love to go straight into meteorology, if possible. Working with the Southeastern Channel will give me that experience which would better my chances of getting a job.”
So in the fall of 2020, as the most record-breaking hurricane season ever recorded was still gearing up, Coby enrolled at Southeastern.
The Southeastern Channel, which Coby knew would be the perfect way to gain invaluable, hands-on experience while also sharing some of his own expertise, did not currently have a weather segment. Undaunted, he approached Southeastern Channel General Manager Rick Settoon about incorporating one.
“I’ve always wanted to have a weather segment for student training and experience at the Southeastern Channel, especially for those who would like to do the weather, and a lot of things have come together to make that happen,” said Rick. “One is having a student who’s knowledgeable enough about weather with a strong career focus of becoming a TV meteorologist, someone who’s dedicated to developing a regular segment. Coby has that laser focus and can become the real trailblazer in this regard.”
Rick and Coby are partnering together to begin building a program for adding weather segments to the Southeastern Channel, identifying and learning the appropriate programs, tools, and approach. Since Coby is not yet a certified meteorologist, he will convey rather than create weather predictions in order to effectively bring local forecasts and weather reports to Southeastern students and the surrounding community.
“I tell students all of the time that at the Southeastern Channel our mission is to help make their dreams come true,” said Rick. “We’ve done that for students who’ve become professional news anchors and reporters, sportscasters, producers, writers, directors, videographers, editors, and filmmakers. We plan to do that for Coby with weathercasting. So it’s the perfect fit.”
Although he’s still in his first year at Southeastern and the weather segment at the Channel is still taking shape in development, Coby, who plans to one day round out his experience at Southeastern by attending meteorology school, has already learned a great deal.
“Working with the Channel has given me first-hand experience of working for a news channel. That’s the closest I’ll get until actually landing a job like that,” he said. “It’s taught me how to work programs like Premiere Pro, which is a computer-based program for video editing. And most importantly, it’s taught me to be more open and step out of my comfort zone. Because when interviewing people or anchoring segments, you can’t be scared. You’ve got to just do it. And if you mess up, you keep going.”
“A weather segment will help students like Coby who plan to eventually attend meteorology school and also those who can get jobs at local stations where they don’t require a meteorology degree to do weather,” said Rick.
In addition to helping build the weather segment so that future students with a similar passion can also gain such an experience, Coby dove into the chance to capture the historic, seemingly endless, 2020 hurricane season, reporting on Hurricane Zeta from the field for the Channel’s Northshore News program. He chased a total of five hurricanes that came into the Gulf and was in Hurricane Sally and Hurricane Zeta as the eyewall actually came ashore.
While the season was one that he will definitely never forget, his venture into Zeta was particularly eventful. Coby described how, despite careful planning, downed equipment left him and his aunt, who shares his love of storm chasing, to ride out the hurricane in their vehicle.
“I went to Slidell and was getting some footage for the Southeastern Channel, and a Doppler radar temporarily lost signal, so I was not able to get that radar feed from my velocity radar like I wanted. By the time it updated and came back online, it was too late. The eyewall was hitting, so we had to pull over at a gas station near the Twin Spans. And when it hit, it came with a punch. There were winds that topped off at maybe 100 miles per hour. I was actually planning on getting out to get footage for the Channel of me in that wind. I could not open the door. I actually tried using my feet to open it. I could not push the door. The car was shaking.”
With nothing else around but a gas station, Coby and his aunt moved to hunker down behind the gas station, away from the awning which Coby feared could be snapped off and lifted away like an umbrella at any moment.
Despite the precarious situation that Coby found himself in during Zeta, which certainly also caused some nail-biting worry and fervent prayer on the part of his parents, Coby did say that safety is at the top of his mind when planning to go out into a storm.
He begins the process by watching the news, checking the radar, plotting where he will be and where all of the exits and alternate routes are, and checking to see which radars he will use and if any are damaged or out of service. Food, water, and battery for recharging his phone are packed. Throughout the storm he uses RadarScope, which has two radar feeds—velocity radar for understanding the wind speed and identifying spinups or tornados and a precipitation depiction for seeing the rain.
Coby mentioned that there is always an unpredictable aspect to storms, which is why preparing as much as possible is so important. However, it’s also part of their beauty. “It’s always a new experience with each storm. Each storm has its own feeling—own unique aspect, or character, within it.”
By the time it was over, the 2020 season produced 30 named storms, 13 hurricanes, and 6 major hurricanes (with top winds of 111 mph or greater). Records were broken for the most named storms, the most named storms to make landfall in Louisiana (five), the strongest storm (Hurricane Laura) to hit Louisiana since 1856, the first time a hurricane eye has passed over New Orleans in more than half a century (Hurricane Zeta), the most storms to form in a single month (five in September), only the second time in history forecasters had to move to the Greek alphabet for names, and more.
Coby has experienced and tracked other storms, including being caught in a few isolated tornados and interviewing survivors in the aftermath of an EF4 tornado in Southern Mississippi. But hurricanes remain the most intriguing to him. And he sees plenty of opportunities in the future for studying them.
“For future hurricane seasons, or any type of weather, I do think they could potentially get stronger over time,” commented Coby. “I think it will be years, maybe even decades, but I do believe climate change and global warming will eventually fuel future hurricanes. I think they will strengthen in size and category. I believe even the way meteorologists predict the weather or the way we learn about the weather could eventually change.”
But for now, Coby is continuing to soak in all he can about meteorology while gaining real-life experience on how to effectively inform others of what may lie ahead.
“I wake up, and I’m excited to go to work and learn something new,” Coby said of being at Southeastern and a part of the Southeastern Channel. “I’m excited to get this thing started, working on the green screen and eventually adding that weather segment. It’s a dream come true.”
Through a yearning for knowledge and a desire to help others, Coby has transformed his dark, incomprehensible monster of wind and water into what appears to be a radiant and deeply fulfilling future.
