Inside Richwood's five-year journey to the Dome

Robert Arvie never lost his smile.

A tumultuous, at least from the outside looking in, rebuild at Richwood couldn’t shake the fifth-year head coach. The Rams had to crawl before they could walk and his demeanor stayed the same despite 16 losses in a two-year span.

The win/loss column has balanced itself out over the past two seasons. Richwood (11-3), once the doormat, is now playing for the Class 3A state championship on Friday at 7 p.m. inside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Smile away, coach. You’ve earned it.

“It all started when I got here five years ago,” Arvie said. “The message never changed. We do the same things in practice that we did then and these young men have bought into it.

“Our road to success wasn’t easy and we got to this point through doing the little things right every day.”

Arvie didn’t see why it couldn’t. In two separate stints at the “new” Richwood — the school reopened in 2001 — he saw the potential, and that made it easy for him to come back as head coach after a one-year stay at Woodlawn-Shreveport.

The original Richwood High School, which closed in 1987, was a hotbed of good football. Area legend Mackie Freeze led the Rams to multiple championships in the all-black Louisiana Interscholastic Athletic and Literary Organization. Eugene Hughes coached Richwood to an undefeated season and lone LHSAA state championship in 1974.

Arvie’s plan when he took the job was to tap into Richwood’s rich football history while following the blueprint of ultra-successful coach Terry Martin’s three-time state champion boy’s basketball program.

“We’re very proud of our basketball team and everything coach Martin has done,” Arvie said. “I remember when he was putting it all together and that’s what I’ve tried to do since I got here.

“I had a five-year plan to get this program going and here we are.”

Richwood won eight games and advanced to the second-round of the 2013 Class 3A playoffs in Arvie’s first year. Optimism ran high for the future. The only problem was the bulk of that team received their diplomas in the spring.

Arvie knew the future was bright. Richwood’s incoming freshman class went undefeated all through middle school, but the only way to unlock that potential was to throw them on the field.

“That was tough but we all stuck together,” senior wide receiver Geor’quarius Spivey said. “We never stopped believing in each other and our coaches and that’s how we got here.”

The Rams only won five games from 2014-15, when this senior class were freshmen and sophomores, and made the playoffs once; an embarrassing 56-18 loss at Patterson in 2014.

“When I met with these kids as eighth-graders, that was the talk. This was going to be the group to win a state championship at Richwood,” Arvie said.

“We never go too low during those tough times, because even though we were losing, we weren’t playing bad football. We lost a lot of close games and more than half of them could have gone either way.”

Veteran coordinator Brad Morace stopped short of calling this year’s Richwood defense the best he’s ever coached.

Morace, a coaching lifer in northeastern Louisiana, still reserves that honor for the defenses he coached at Ouachita in 1999 and 2008, but there is one similarity through all three units.

“I heard (New England Patriots coach) Bill Belichick say he doesn’t coach people he doesn’t like anymore and that hit home with me,” Morace said. “I try to surround myself with high-character kids that want to listen and work and all these guys have that.

“All those defenses had one thing in common. They loved each other and they do the right things in practice each and every day.”

Arvie knew his vision of Richwood football would be built around defense the moment he walked into the field house. That was why he brought in Morace and the results have been impressive.

Richwood shook off a slow start and is allowing just 16 points per game. The Rams have two shutouts on their resume and have allowed eight points or less six times.

“It’s a great feeling as a coach knowing you have a defense that will give you a chance to win in every game,” Arvie said. “Our defense has proven it can play with anyone in the state and I don’t expect anything different on Friday.”

West Feliciana, Richwood’s opponent in the Superdome, can light up the scoreboard. The Saints (13-1) are scoring 39.8 points on average and topped the 40-point mark seven times.

High-scoring offenses are nothing new for Richwood. Sterlington and Kaplan were each scoring well over 30 points a game when each team faced Richwood in the Class 3A quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively.

Neither team topped 14 points against a Rams defense both battle-tested and aged to perfection.

“These kids have all been in it,” Morace said. “We had four of them start as freshmen and eight as sophomores so they’ve been in big games. Nothing this big but they’ve been there.”

Richwood finally cleared the quarterfinal hurdle when it beat Sterlington, Class 3A’s top overall seed, 15-14, a triumph that was even sweeter when put into context. Sterlington rolled up over 300 yards rushing and beat the Rams 28-21 for the District 2-3A championship.

Three weeks later, Richwood stoned Sterlington at the line of scrimmage — the Panthers ran for just 87 yards — and held on for a 15-14 win.

“We were confident going in,” senior defensive end Jarviar Wade said. “The way the last one went left a bad taste in our mouths that we had to get rid of.”

The magic number for Richwood all season has been 21 points. In Arvie’s mind, if the Rams score three touchdowns, they aren’t losing. The problem was getting to 21 points.

While Richwood’s defense remained on schedule during its rebuilding phase, the offense lagged. The lack of production cost the Rams a chance at a district championship in 2016 and led to Arvie bringing in LaVelle Wilson Jr. as offensive coordinator during the offseason.

Wilson jumpstarted the offense at midseason by turning the keys over senior Joseph Smith, a converted wide receiver who hadn’t taken a snap at quarterback since middle school.

“I actually asked to go back to quarterback,” Smith said. “It was hard at first learning all the plays but I just wanted to give my team a spark and it all worked out.”

Richwood’s revamped offense isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Wilson settled on a simple approach of handing the ball to senior Anthony Watson and quarterback-turned short-yardage specialist Ashley Holmes to set up throws to Spivey, a 6-foot-5 Mississippi State commit, TCU commit Hidari Ceasar and Zion Stokes down the field.

“I didn’t want to move Joseph from receiver, but ever since we made the change we’ve been rolling,” Wilson said.

“It isn’t anything hard that we’re doing. Joseph has done a good job getting our athletes the ball and we’ve been successful.”

“Believe the hype” is more than just Richwood’s motto now. As the lone north Louisiana team playing for a state championship, most of the region have adopted the Rams for the next 24 hours at least.

Arvie received calls and texts from the likes of Mickey McCarty at Neville, Airline’s Bo Meeks, Jerwin Wilson at Woodlawn-Shreveport and Mangham’s Tommy Tharp.

The message was all the same. Go win it.

“We know we’re representing north Louisiana but we can’t get caught up in history or all those other things,” Arvie said.

“We’re focused on what we have to do to beat a talented West Feliciana team like we have in every game this season.”

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