LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana (KPLC) – The Grand Lake Hornets finished last season with a first-round playoff exit and finished the year with a 6-5 record. This season, the Hornets dropped from Class 2A to 1A. Head coach Jeff Wainwright said their preparation methods aren’t changing, but should prevent attrition from a lower-class team.

“Moving down to 1A might reduce our chances of injury when we play four quarters against a team like Notre Dame and stuff like that. You know, that’s a pretty tough situation when we have such a small roster, but it doesn’t make a huge difference. We have a lot of great coaches on the schedule. These guys have been coaching for a long time, have a lot of experience, a lot of wins and they have prepared their teams really well. Every day we just work on the things we can improve from yesterday and Friday night we let things go as they go,” said Grand Lake head coach Jeff Wainwright.

The older members of this team have grown up together and have developed a bond that they believe will lead to winning.

“I think we’ll be good at everything. Most of us have been playing since our freshman year. We all have good chemistry, we’ve been playing together our whole lives,” said Brycen Guillory, Grand Lake’s quarterback and safety.

The Hornets reached their first state championship game in school history in 2020 and hope to get back to the title game this season, but this time finish it all off.

“We always plan or expect to make it to the end, but sometimes it doesn’t work out the year that our goal is. It’s never happened in Grand Lake. Our goal is to be the first team to ever win in Grand Lake,” Grand Lake middle linebacker Wyatt Wilkerson said.

“I want to go as far as I can and I hope everyone on the team is as excited as I am because we’re going to do it this year,” said Grand Lake outside linebacker Tony Ledoux.

The Hornets will travel to Beauregard Parish on September 5th to face the East Beau Trojans in their season opener.

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