By: RHETT MANUEL
Sports Editor
VILLE PLATTE – To the untrained eye and to those who don’t know the man, Sacred Heart head coach and Evangeline Parish Coach of the Year Josh Harper is just another one of those winning-obsessed, high-strung football coaches.
And of course, winning is fun for him.
But, knowing his why and where his joy of coaching stems from is to understand Harper even better.
During football and basketball seasons he coaches as hard and as passionately as anyone with the goal of molding the young men and women he leads into better people.
He’ll tell you first-hand that the wins and championships are secondary. Talking to him, the impression that a life of winless seasons wouldn’t matter to him if it meant a 100 percent success rate in preparing every athlete he coaches for life after high school.
Harper’s message of resilience molded an injury-battered Sacred Heart team into one that ended the year with eight wins and their second-consecutive Division IV quarterfinal playoff appearance.
For that, and his dedication to his players and their growth, Harper is being recognized as the Coach of the Year.
“It’s a great honor to be recognized,” he said. “As you go through a year, as coaches you sit back and recognize those around you. I consider myself a humble person and I like to give credit to the kids because we can only do so much as coaches.”
Kids, however, need to have capable leaders to guide them towards success. Harper and his coaching staff preached accountability on a daily basis.
“I’ll say this … you’re only as good as your systems and those around you. Our coaching staff came in and they put the work in each and every day.
“We preached coming out on the practice field with energy and squeezing everything out of ourselves. We’re never the biggest or fastest team, so we have to do everything we can to prepare our kids to be in a situation where they can be successful.”
The hard work of practice showed its head before the season even started. It should’ve served as an omen of the adversity the Trojans would face after a scoreless tie against Pine Prairie in the jamboree.
That game, according to Harper, was uncharacteristic of the way he and his staff run the program and the expectations they hold for players.
It was mistake-riddled and sloppy. And while part of the sloppiness could be attributed to poor field conditions, Harper did what he knows best and coached his guys through it.
“We had to treat these kids like a brand-new team,” Harper said. “We knew what the bar could be going into the year but we had to get that out of them and let them understand that in the course of a football game that’s the type of stuff you’re going to be faced with.
“If you’re behind the chains, or having a negative moment, that face-to-face with adversity and that grind are needed to finish a game for four quarters. We got back to our fundamentals, even things like how to stand that you take for granted.”
It only got tougher as the year got on, with injuries plaguing the Trojans most of the year. It forced them to cultivate depth and ultimately lean on senior leaders to maximize his team’s potential.
“You take a kid like Campbell Earles, who had a good junior year but I thought had a great senior year. He’s a light-hearted kid, sort of a jokester who doesn’t always take things seriously. But he steps up at the right time.
“Guys like Gabe Wilmouth, who showed that he wanted to be a football player. He’s more of a baseball guy, and it didn’t really pan out his junior year in football. But, I had to keep him out of the playoff game against Ouachita Christian. I wasn’t going to let him sacrifice a future in baseball for one game.
“And Everett Johnson, as a junior he’s a quiet leader but took that role as our offensive line leader.”
While the honor is an individual one for Harper, he refuses to not recognize those around him for any success.
“It’s a testament to this program we’ve built, to the community and what we’ve done as a complete coaching staff to build this.
“It’s an honor for me, but I’ll always throw that honor back to my assistants.”
June 19, 2026
