One of the area’s rising young high school football coaches has landed his first head coaching job. Welsh promoted defensive coordinator Ronnie Courville to head coach on Sunday.

“I am excited,” Courville said. “It is the only place I have been, but I love the community.

“We have so much support here. We have a good staff and I love everything about it here. I was surprised. I thought I had a shot, but you never really know. There are a lot of good coaches around here.”

At 26 years of age, Courville is the second new head coach in Southwest Louisiana under 30, joining Vinton’s Tyler Lavergne.

Courville has spent his entire coaching career (six years) at Welsh, working under Cody Gueringer, whom he replaced, and John Richardson, Westlake’s current head coach. Gueringer left to take the head coaching job at Sulphur.

“I feel like what I learned the most from them is how to structure things,” Courville said. “They left a great structure and great football culture.”

Courville spent the last three seasons as the Greyhounds’ defensive coordinator. The Greyhounds limited opponents to 17.5 points a game, went 9-2 and reached the regional round of the Division IV non-select playoffs. He said he plans to continue to call the plays on defense.

“I think the biggest thing is building confidence in your kids,” Courville said. “If they believe in what they are doing, in each other and the staff, they are going to play fast and well.

“I think we have a lot of potential. We have a couple of younger guys that are going to move into starting roles, but I think we have a lot of potential for sure.”

Welsh is one of seven high schools that have hired new head football coaches since the 2022 season ended along with Sulphur (Gueringer), LaGrange (Idaibi Ogbanga), Rosepine (Try Gardner), Jennings (Bret Fuselier), Vinton (Lavergne) and Pickering (John Dougherty).

Head coaching vacancies remain at Allen Parish schools Kinder and Oberlin.