McNeese Head Coach Gary Goff Discusses Cancelation of Northwestern State Game

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) - Just moments before Gary Goff’s weekly Thursday press conference where he discusses that weekend’s game, it was announced that their Saturday homecoming matchup vs. Northwestern State, which was scheduled to kick off just 52 hours later, had been canceled.

Ronnie Caldwell, a football player at Northwestern State was shot and killed earlier this month in Natchitoches, leading to the cancelation of the Demons’ October 14th game at Nicholls. Northwestern State did play their October 19th game against Southeastern, but the Demons then decided on Thursday, October 26th, two days before their game at McNeese on the 28th, that they would cancel the remainder of their season for the health and well-being of their student-athletes and coaches.

The news that Northwestern State had canceled their remaining games against McNeese, Houston Christian, Incarnate Word, and Texas A&M - Commerce was accompanied by the news that Head Coach Brad Laird had resigned as well.

“I just found out a couple of minutes before our team meeting, very unfortunate, but again our thoughts and prayers are with Ronnie Caldwell’s family, very sad situation,” said McNeese Head Coach Gary Goff. “I’m shocked to find out we’re not playing a game on Thursday, very unfortunate for everyone involved. It is what it is, we have to move forward and we’re going to practice tomorrow to get a head start on Southeastern, and we’ll practice again on Saturday and move forward. I just told the team we can’t control this, there’s no reason to worry about things that are out of our control, but it’s very unfortunate.”

The news means the Pokes, who were set to enter Saturday’s game still searching for their first win, will play one less game, and the Pokes will use Saturday as a practice day to prepare for next week’s opponent; the Southeastern Louisiana Lions.

“We wanted to go out there and do well, I thought last weekend we played really well against a really good team, but we came up short, and we were excited to get out there this week and try to finish the deal, but you’ve got to move forward. I just told the team this, our focus now has to be on Southeastern, our next opponent, and Southeastern had a bye this week as well, but instead of game planning all week they’ve been looking at us, we haven’t looked at Southeastern at all, so we’ll start that today,” said Goff.

The cancelation not only means the Pokes will play one less game, but it also means there will be one less opportunity for players such as quarterback Kamden Sixkiller to get experience on the field, a player Goff was planning to play against Northwestern State, and in the remainder of McNeese’s games to see what he has in Sixkiller going into next season without burning his redshirt.

“It’s funny because we just talked about it as a staff today, what’s our plan in this game for Sixkiller? Ryan (Roberts) is starting, but I really want to have a set time for when we get him in, in the game of football everything is so unexpected at times, it’s still kind of a little bit of a feel deal because the most important thing is getting that win, so if Ryan was hot we were going to go with him, but I still wanted to somehow get Sixkiller in the game at some point. So, it’s one less opportunity, and I’m sure he’s pretty disappointed right now too because he knew he was going to play.”

For the full Thursday press conference, click below.

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