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Morgan City and Berwick High schools will begin their regular seasons Friday when they meet each other on the gridiron at Tiger Stadium in Morgan City.
Both teams are coming off jamboree losses at the Taco Bell Morgan City High School Jamboree last week as Morgan City fell to Patterson 35-7, and Berwick lost to White Castle 19-12.
In Morgan City’s contest, its touchdown came via a 90-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Devonta Grogan.
Meanwhile, Berwick’s touchdowns came via a 70-yard touchdown completion from quarterback Reed Gonzales to Keyon Singleton on a screen pass and a 67-yard touchdown pass from Gonzales to Dylan Cothron.
Gonzales finished the game with 221 yards passing, completing 7 of 18 attempts. He had two touchdowns and one interception.
“For the jamboree, I thought at times we played OK,” Berwick Coach Mike Walker said. “I thought our big thing, though, we had a big turnover on our possession when we needed to score. We had a possession where we had the ball like 10 or 12 plays and couldn’t punch it in. We scored on two big plays, and we weren’t able to necessarily sustain drives to get points, and defensively, we just gave up too many big plays.”
Heading into week 1, Walker said his team will have a shot to win if they can score on offensive possessions and keep Morgan City’s big plays to a minimum.
As for Morgan City, all eyes on Berwick’s defense will be on Morgan City standout Devonta Grogan.
“He’s by far their best player,” Walker said. “He’s going to play offense, defense and special teams, so we’re going to have to do a good job of finding where he’s at and not let him beat us, force them to have somebody else step up to beat us. We’re going to do some things to try and limit his production.”
If the Tigers can limit Grogan’s big plays, Walker said his team has a chance to win.
Meanwhile, Morgan City High School Coach Chris Stroud said that Berwick is a well-coached squad.
“We knew they had lost their starting quarterback and tailback (from a year ago), but they moved a good athlete (Keyon Singleton) to running back,” Stroud said. “They’re going to do some things with him, try to get the ball in his hands. They play very good defense. They fly around. They look like bumble bees flying everywhere to the football.”
Stroud said the Tigers, who have a small offensive line, have had some problems moving the pigskin up the field.
“If our O-line continues to improve and get better, we’ll have a chance, but we got to block better,” he said.
Additional reporting by The Daily Review’s Corwin Murray.

BATON ROUGE — By Gov. John Bel Edwards’ telling, Louisiana’s economy is on the mend, growing and creating new jobs after exiting a recession. By his Republican opponents’ accounts, the state economy is in a slump, spiraling into a deep decline.
As often happens with campaign talking points, the reality rests somewhere in the murky middle between the competing rosy interpretation and starkly pessimistic view.
Edwards faces two main GOP challengers on the Oct. 12 ballot: U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, a doctor from rural northeast Louisiana, and Eddie Rispone, a wealthy Baton Rouge businessman making his first bid for elected office.
The two sides in the governor’s race are cherry-picking economic facts to either credit the Democratic incumbent’s term with jump-starting a sluggish state economy or trash Edwards’ performance as dragging the state into the economic doldrums.
A deep dive into years of employment data, done by state legislative economist Greg Albrecht, instead shows a Louisiana economy still being hammered by the steep drop in oil and gas prices that started during former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s tenure.
Louisiana has started modest, though inconsistent, upticks in job growth after the state shed jobs during 2015 and 2016, Albrecht’s analysis shows. Still, the data shows Louisiana significantly lags the South and the nation in job creation, and the state remains below its peak 2014 level of employment.
“As reflected in those employment numbers, it’s been flat. There’s been improvement, but it’s pretty modest,” Albrecht said.
The economist said Louisiana’s private sector employment was 9.8% higher in June 2019 than it was in February 2010, the state’s low point from the national recession. By comparison, the private sector employment growth over the same period was 22.5% for the South and 20.1% for the nation.
“Over the course of the national expansion to date, total payroll employment growth in Louisiana has been approximately 67% less than that of the national economy and 70% less than the South,” Albrecht wrote in his analysis.
That doesn’t suggest Louisiana is rocking and rolling on the economic front, but it also doesn’t mean Louisiana has fallen into the economic abyss.
The numbers used by Democrats and Republicans to make their points often capture short snapshots in time or don’t provide the full context of a report.
For example, Edwards recently touted Louisiana’s 4.3% unemployment rate as the lowest the state has seen in 11 years and lower than the 6.1% rate when he took office. “Louisiana truly is headed on the right track,” he said in a statement.
The flip side, which Republicans point out, is that Louisiana continues to have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, above the national average of 3.7% and below the rate of only six other states.
The Republican Governors Association is running a TV ad slamming Edwards on the economy, describing Louisiana as “the only state in America that lost jobs in the last year.” That spot uses federal seasonally-adjusted employment data that shows Louisiana has 1,000 fewer jobs in July 2019 compared to July 2018.
Democrats pick a different set of months for comparison to suggest the job numbers look better.
None of the data looks great amid the threat of another national recession, particularly with outmigration trends suggesting Louisiana’s population continues to stagnate compared with many of its neighbors.
But how much a governor can influence those factors in a short time is questionable.
“In effect, the state is externally driven,” Albrecht said. “I don’t think state governments can really do much to push their economies faster in any short and intermediate term and certainly not with spending and tax policy.”
The federal government can change interest rates, rework trade policy, and deficit spend to try to give the economy a boost. States can’t do such things.
Governors and lawmakers can, however, work to improve education, upgrade infrastructure, rewrite tax laws and adjust legal systems to lay the groundwork for future economic growth. Albrecht said such changes won’t show up in the snapshot of one term in office and it would take years to determine if they alter a state’s economic trajectory.
Melinda Deslatte has covered Louisiana politics for The Associated Press since 2000. Follow her at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte

Louise Caroline VanDusen, 81, a native of Trenton, New Jersey, and resident of Patterson, died Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, at Chateau Terrebonne Health Care.

She is survived by a son, Brian Mendanhall of Chicago; a daughter, April VanDusen of Patterson; a sister, Barbara Ritch of Arizona; and three grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband, parents, a grandson and four siblings.

A private memorial service will be held at a later date.

Twin City Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards has been discharged from the hospital after an overnight stay.

A spokesman for the 92-year-old Edwards said he was discharged Wednesday evening from Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center in Baton Rouge.

Edwards was hospitalized Tuesday. His daughter said he had suffered a drop in blood sugar after becoming dehydrated.

Spokesman Leo Honeycutt says “all tests and vital signs are good” for the former governor.

Edwards, a Democrat, dominated Louisiana politics for much of the late 20th century. He served as governor from 1972 to 1980, 1984 to 1988 and 1992 to 1996.

He went to prison following a May 2000 conviction for racketeering involving riverboat casino licenses, but always proclaimed his innocence. He was released in 2011 and, at age 83, married his third wife, Trina Grimes, then 32, who had visited him in prison after they struck up a pen pal relationship. They had a son in 2013.

His one try at a political comeback came up short. He earned a runoff spot in a south Louisiana congressional race in 2014, only to lose to Republican Garret Graves.

He attended former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s funeral last month and spoke at a ceremony marking the retirement of his longtime legislative ally, outgoing Senate President John Alario, earlier this year.