Lake Charles College Prep has emerged as one of the state’s most dominant track and field programs in the last decade, building off the 400 meters and relays while developing other events to complement the Trailblazers’ strength, winning indoor and outdoor state championships. (American Press)

In less than a decade, the Lake Charles College Prep boys track and field has become a powerhouse program with three state championships and a trio of runners-up.

The 2025 season was the Trailblazers’ most successful yet. A year after runner-up finishes at the state indoor and outdoor meets in Baton Rouge, they won the Class 3A outdoor state championship and the Division II indoor title in February. They are the first area school to win an indoor and outdoor state championship in the same season since the St. Louis Catholic girls team accomplished the feat in 2022.

“The kids naturally work hard,” said head coach Jackie Rhine. “Some of the programs you have to pull it out of kids to work hard. At Prep, almost every sport across the board, the kids understand what the standard is, and it’s going to be hard work on the track and off the track.”

Rhine attributes the success in his three seasons to building the team around the 400-meter run and relays. In the last three seasons, LCCP has won 14 relay state medals, including three consecutive golds in the 4×400 and back-to-back indoor 4x800s. Careion Franklin won three medals in the 400, including an indoor state runner-up in 2024.

“I believe everyone runs the 400, and when you have a program like that, it normally gives you success,” Rhine said. “I knew I had sprinters.

“Let’s build a 4×800 and let’s build some 800-meter runners and let’s see how that goes. And it meshed well. We had the sprinters, we had the distance runners and that was the recipe for a state championship.”

Rhine said track and field benefits all sports at the school.

“With the help of the football coaches, he (football head coach Erick Franklin) almost made it mandatory that his skilled position guys go run track,” Rhine said.

While LCCP has plenty of sprinters, distance runners and jumpers, he said the team will be even more formidable once it develops some throwers.

“That’s my next goal to build our throws, you know, to have a complete program, 360,” Rhine said. “We need to get out throwing our throws above the par and that’s our next project. So we’ll have field … we have jumpers, triple jumpers, high jumpers, we’ll have sprinters and we’ll have distance runners and we’ll have throwers and then we’ll be tough to compete with for a long time to come.”

Things started slowly for LCCP. The school opened in 2014 and started a junior varsity team in 2016. In its first varsity meet, the Barbe Buc Relays in 2017, the Trailblazers scored a single point. By the end of the 2018 season, led by head Charles Jackson, they qualified for the regional meet in four events.

Former Westlake High School and McNeese State standout Terance Cahee took over the program in 2019. LCCP qualified for the state meet for the first time and scored two points with a fifth-place finish in the 4×100 with three future Division I athletes in Dillon Simon, Trevonte Citizen and Solomon Lewis plus Caleb Robinson.

The COVID-19 pandemic derailed the 2020 season, but 2021 proved to be their breakthrough year. Under Cahee, who coaches safties at McNeese, the Trailblazers won the first team state championship in school history. They tied Madison Prep Academy with 60 points for the Class 3A title.

2021 also brought the team’s first individual state champion. Marcus Francis won the outdoor discus title. He was also the runner-up in the outdoor and indoor (Division II) shot put and was the program’s first Cagle Award winner along with Thaddeus Campbell. Campbell helped lead the Trailblazers to gold in the indoor 4×200 and 4×400 that season, plus the outdoor 4×200 and a silver in the 4×100. He was the outdoor 300 hurdles and triple jump runner-up.