North Vermilion coach proud of group of 13 seniors

The North Vermilion High School baseball team is losing a group of 13 seniors to graduation this month after a four-year career that saw them win one state championship, finish as state runner-up in another season and reach the quarterfinals this year, which doesn’t even count a season cut short by COVID their freshman year.
Patriots coach Jeremy Trahan wanted to make sure the group of seniors know how much they accomplished and how much he appreciates them as players and young men. Through the years, the group that came in as freshmen is largely the same group that is graduating, with perhaps only one or two leaving the program.
“We’re going to miss the whole group,” Trahan said. “We’ve been together a long time. They’ve had a lot of success. It’s going to be tough not having those guys around every day.”
The group’s attitude was a big part of the success they had.
“I’ve always felt like they were more worried about winning than themselves,” Trahan said. “They’ve stuck it out together and were more worried about winning than individual success. I would say that is the biggest thing.”
The seniors had both team success and personal success. COVID cut their freshman season down to eight games, in a season that had promised to be very successful. In four years, the Patriots went 104-20, a winning percentage of .839.
And six of the seniors will end up signing to play college baseball, with five already signed and one making a decision where to play. It’s the biggest group of signees the team has produced.
“This will be the most,” Trahan said. “The most we had sign was last year. We had all five of our seniors sign last year.”
The 13 seniors were Tyson Leblanc, Camden Breaux, Landon Duhon, Ethan Frederick, Cole Veronie, Aiden Leonard, Ian Erbe, Seth Abboud, Evan Deshotel, Allen Johnson, Brandt Fontenot, Braxton Savant and Jace Day.
All contributed in one way or another.
“In that last series, eight of them started in the lineup for us, and then two others were our starting pitchers, in the first game and the second game,” Trahan said. “And then another one of the seniors pitched in relief in one of the games. That’s 11 of the 13. One of our other seniors was hurt the whole year, and the other senior was a reserve infielder for us.”
The coach said that when these seniors were freshmen, the Patriots had one of their most talented squads, with a big senior group that was poised to make a run at a state title. When the season was cut short, the team had a 7-1 record.
The current seniors then helped North Vermilion set a team record for wins the next year, and surpassed that win total the following year.
“This year we scheduled a lot harder,” Trahan said. “We ended up with not as many wins as the year before, but we played a lot harder schedule. Still, we were 26-9. They’ve done a lot of special things that nobody’s done in this program. So definitely, hats off to them.”
The Patriots will look to continue that success with the next group. The year cut short by COVID had three college signees, and people didn’t think the next year would be as successful. The team went on to win the Class 4A championship, and went back to the finals the next year.
“We’re hoping that this next year’s group can pick up where these seniors left off,” Trahan said. “I’m just proud of the group of kids. It obviously didn’t work out the way we wanted, but it wasn’t from a lack of effort. We just got beat. We got beat by a good team, and sometimes that’s going to happen.”