Indest to take over Carencro football program

BY Shaun Hearen

LSN STAFF WRITER

KAPLAN — Brent Indest has built a reputation as a football coach who can turn things around.

The Carencro football program has been down during the past couple of seasons based on its success of the previous 15-plus years.

Pending approval from the Lafayette Parish School Board, Indest, who has been the head coach at Kaplan the past two seasons, will begin his quest to bring Carencro, which finished 3-7 last season, back to the top of Class 5A.

Indest will replace long-time Carencro head coach Mac Barousse, who led the Bears the 5A title in 1992. Barousse resigned last fall.

“Carencro has a lot of things I’m looking for in a program,” Indest said. “The school has block scheduling and that will give me access to all of my athletes for an hour and 45 minutes every day of the year.

“Another thing is that it’s 5A football and that’s something I’ve always wanted to take a crack at.”

There’s no doubt Indest has been successful on the 3A and 4A levels. He built up programs from scratch at Abbeville (1-9 year before Indest took over) and Crowley (0-10 before Indest). He turned both stops into playoff contenders, reaching the postseason nine times in 11 years.

He left Crowley, where he won two district titles, after the 2006 season to become an assistant on Derek Dooley’s staff at Louisiana Tech. After a one-year stint in Ruston, Indest returned to the high-school ranks to lead the Pirates in ‘08.

The venture worked for all parties involved.

For the coach, it gave Indest a chance to get back in high school as a head coach.

“I have to thank (Kaplan principal) Laura LeBeouf for giving me the opportunity,” Indest said. “When she hired me, I was just looking to get out of college football, where I was miserable. I thought I was going to have to get an assistant job somewhere.

“The timing just worked out.”

Indest leaving Kaplan is by no means a Lane Kiffin/Tennessee situation, where the school had only a short heads up on a move.

“This is something we have planned for,” LeBeouf said. “When Brent came here we knew it was short term. He guaranteed he would be here two years.

“In those two years he took this from a program that hadn’t won a district game in five years, to a program that was competitive and ranked in the polls.”

Indest, who has 98 wins in 13 years as a head coach, went 15-4 during two regular seasons at Kaplan. He won Class 3A Coach of the Year honors and took the Pirates to playoffs twice, including a first-round home game this past season.

It’s the two playoff games, a 23-18 loss at Redemptorist in ‘08 and a 36-35 thriller to Richwood at home last November, that are Indest’s only regrets at Kaplan.

“I just wish, in those two tough playoff losses,” Indest said, “that we could have got the ball to bounce a different way.”

LeBeouf said she plans to organize the search for a new head coach. It will be tough to replace what Indest has brought to Kaplan, but that’s the goal.

“We want to bring in the right person to keep going what coach Indest has built,” LeBeouf said.

Indest certainly appreciated the opportunity to have done so.

“I’m highly indebted to, not only the tremendous players I coached and got to be around,” Indest said, “but to the coaching staff that rallied around my system and what I wanted to do.

“I’m indebted to the community, the coaches and the kids. Everyone just jumped on board.”