By: RHETT MANUEL
Sports Editor
BASILE – Evangeline Parish defensive MVP, Basile’s Luke Fontenot, is a rare breed.
He’s an adamant team player. He’s the type of kid that is willing to do whatever t takes to help his team win.
Perhaps nothing he did in his high school career defined that as well as that one time he was asked to play defensive tackle against Sacred Heart.
This normally wouldn’t be a big deal. Except for the fact that Fontenot weighs 150 pounds on a good day.
No problem. Just another day at the office for Fontenot, who was honored alongside teammate Ashton Deaville.
Fontenot is the third-consecutive Basile linebacker to win the parish’s defensive MVP award, joining Baylor McCoy who won the award the previous two years.
It speaks to how important Fontenot was to Basile, and to the position’s importance to Basile’s overall defensive scheme.
“Luke played all kinds of positions for us last season, Ashton as well,” Basile head coach Kevin Bertrand said. “They never thought of themselves as being one position players. They thought of themselves as good teammates and they did everything they could to be that for their guys.”
Fontenot did more than enough to lead Basile’s defense all season, and not just by example. Fontenot was a force, finishing the season with 110 total tackles to lead the Bearcats’ unit.
How he got there was no accident. Fontenot is a multi-sport athlete who also wrestles.
Between his multi-sport background and the mentorship of Basile defensive coordinator Brian McCoy, Fontenot had quite the base to work from.
“Coach McCoy does an incredible job of getting our defense ready. He sees things I don’t sometimes,” Bertrand said. He has a good feel for it and does a great job of mentoring these men.
“He really cares about them, and he puts a lot of himself into this job. I rely on him a lot to help lead this team. It’s really a blessing to have not only him, but our entire coaching staff.”
Fontenot agrees with Bertrand’s sentiment.
“Coach McCoy really helped with all of that,” Fontenot said of stepping into the linebacker position. “He told me where I should be and how I should do it. Just like in the past with Baylor, he mentored me as well. All that led up to now and me being a leader on this side of the ball.”
As for wrestling, it did more for the undersized Fontenot than the uneducated on the sport could ever realize.
“I’ve been on the wrestling team throughout my high school career,” Fontenot said. “It helps in so many ways, like tackling and leverage and conditioning. All the wrestling guys play football, so it brings us all closer together.”
What made both Fontenot and this defense was simple according to him.
“We just go out and bust heads,” he said. “Our goal was to give it our all every play. We knew they were bigger. We knew they were faster. But we were never going to play scared.”
June 19, 2026
