Stadium named after illustrious coach

For more than two decades, the late Ralph Pere coached the South Lafourche football team to local dominance.

The gridiron Pere roamed will now bear his legendary name.

The Lafourche Parish School Board approved a motion at last Wednesday’s regularly scheduled school board meeting to name the Tarpons’ football field “Ralph Pere Field.”

The motion passed with a unanimous vote.

“Mr. Pere was one of a kind in our school system,” Lafourche Parish School Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews said. “He did a lot of work and encouraged a lot of kids and got them where they needed to go. … He worked very hard for this system.”

“Obviously this is great,” South Lafourche’s current coach Terry Farmer added. “Whatever they can do to promote that much positive history in our program, that’s great.”

In 21 seasons as the Tarpons’ coach, Pere fielded a 147-91 record, while also winning 10 district championships.

When his teams made the playoffs, that’s when they were the most dangerous, as the Tarpons won the 1971 Class 3-A and 1977 Class 4-A state championships.

Those are the only football state championships in that football-craved community’s history.

“You can’t take away from the fact that he did a fabulous job for such a long period of years,” Farmer said. “He worked hard and there’s a lot of people here who love him. There’s a lot of men here who he coached who think the world of him. He was a hard-nosed guy. He was strict in an area that needed that and demanded work ethic and needed that kind of coach to be around.”

Pere retired following the 1990 season and stepped back from the school’s athletic events.

“He just kind of got away,” Farmer said. “Coaching football is pretty stressful, especially if you’re the head football coach. Doing it that many years, I’d imagine he was pretty stressed.”

Even in an athletic sabbatical, he did take the time to meet several of the Tarpons’ current coaches, including Farmer who said he was honored the legend took the time to welcome him to the school.

“I only met him a couple of times, but everything was positive,” Farmer said. “The few times that I was able to spend with him were always times that I enjoyed. … I met a lot of his people. I met a lot of the people who are his friends. Everything I saw for myself and heard from others was that this was a great man.”

With football in Pere’s rearview mirror, the coach took up a love for fishing later in life and spent several afternoons in Fourchon and Grand Isle hauling in an afternoon ice chest full of speckled trout.

“He was a big fisherman and also a big family guy,” Farmer said.

The coach died in January after a battle with lung cancer at the age of 68.

With the school board’s decision, his legacy will now live in Tarpons’ football history forever.

Farmer and the rest of the South Lafourche community believe that’s exactly how things should be.

“Ralph would definitely not want this,” his wife Cathy Sue Pere said before the school board. “He was very plain and simple and didn’t like the limelight. But I know he’d be very moved and very humbled by this. I just thank you. It’s been such an honor.”

“He’s looking down,” school board member and the coach’s brother Ronald Pere said. “And I think he’s smiling.”