The Lockport Middle School boys’ basketball team will have a new coach in 2023-2024 – a former standout girls’ basketball player at Central Lafourche High School.
Caroline Loupe announced on social media this week that she has been hired to coach the Pirates – her first-ever attempt at coaching, a job she hopes will sometime be her full-time profession.
Loupe, 18, graduated Central Lafourche last season and was a multi-year starter and standout on the team. She said she is honored for the opportunity to get into coaching and has big hopes for the program.
“I feel very honored,” Loupe told By-U Sports. “I have always loved anything basketball, whether I’m playing or coaching. I am super excited to be able to do this. From playing at this school from 6th-8th grade and being able to lead the girls team to wins during seasons to now giving back to the kids and school and being able to coach them feels like a dream come true.”
Loupe said she was in the process of taking another position when she was pulled back home. She said she was exploring a chance to coach at another school when she was called and told that the Lockport Middle boys’ job was still vacant, and the school wanted her to consider. The interest was mutual, and Loupe said she jobbed on the opportunity.
“I just knew I couldn’t pass this one up,” she said. “I am so, so excited to be able to coach them.”
Loupe said her goals for the team in 2023-2024 are to take the team and grow their talents and abilities and make them better throughout the course of the season. Loupe said she wants the kids to work hard and compete and she will push them all to become better individual players knowing that it will make the team better over the long haul.
A lot of those traits are the same tendencies that made Loupe a quality player. Over her career at Central Lafourche, she was a multi-year standout and All-District caliber player who helped lead the Trojans to the playoffs last season.
“I just want non-stop improvement in skill and work ethic throughout every game and every practice,” she said. “I want the boys to know that nothing comes easy and they have to work hard in everything they do.”
Loupe is a freshman student at Nicholls State University, and she thinks that taking this job will give her a leg up into her future. She is a Human Performance Education major who hopes to get into teaching post-grad with hopes of being a coach for a living.
“I plan to become a teacher and a coach,” she said. “This is the best thing I can hope for to start my coaching career this early.”