Touchdown Live Game of the Week - Leesville Preview

LEESVILLE, La. (KPLC) - The Leesville Wampus Cats entered the 2023 season following a 2022 campaign in which they made the State Quarter Finals and went 8-2 in the regular season. That regular-season success carried over into week one as the Wampus Cats beat Jennings 32-14 but in week two they welcomed a challenging opponent in the Jena Giants who got the best of Leesville 22-20.

Leesville was victorious against Jena on the road last season 21-14 and Head Coach Robert Causey knows when you play a team of that caliber you have to bring your A game.

“The lesson learned is that the margin of error when you play quality teams is very small, the way that we schedule we try to schedule really good programs in order to find out our weaknesses early in the season and thats what Jena exposed we made too many errors in the course of the game we kept it close at the end but we didn’t make enough plays at the end of the game to have a shot,” said Leesville Head Coach Robert Causey.

For the seniors on the team, they’re taking it as their responsibility to learn from this loss and bounce back from it.

“We need to play as a team we had a lot of separation, if we come together we can play way better and we can’t hang our heads off of a loss,” senior left guard, Ethan Meck said.

The Wampus Cats delivered the Yellowjackets their only regular season loss last season, but ultimately Iowa got the best of them when it counted the most, defeating Leesville 31-14 in the playoffs, this season they’ll be traveling to Iowa for this week three matchup but Coach Causey said he isn’t focusing on the past he’s only looking forward with the group of guys that will take the field Friday night.

“That’s old news that’s history and you know history will repeat itself if you do not learn from your mistakes but as far as that goes this is a new year it’s a different team with different kids the makeup of our team is totally different,” Causey said.

Leesville has an opportunity to settle the score with Iowa and for returning players like Rashad Johnson this game is a chance to redeem themselves.

“I look at it as it’s personal you know we beat them in week three of last season and they came back in the playoffs and knocked us out in the quarterfinals It hurt everyone for real,” senior middle linebacker, Rashad Johnson said.

Friday’s matchup kicks off on Friday at 7:00 at Iowa. Tune into KPLC on Wednesday at 10:00 for a preview of the Leesville Wampus Cats, and on Friday at 5:00 for the Touchdown Live Pregame Show, where we talk to both Iowa Head Coach Tommy Johns, and Leesville Head Coach Robert Causey less than two hours before the game.

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