Kenner, La. — Meet the Kenner Discovery football team. They’re the new kid on the block, starting their first season as a varsity program. They were added as a JV team last year with less than 40 players, and now they’ve got a full squad of nearly 70, who are all ready for year one as a class 3A team.
“Our kids are ready to roll,” said Kenner Discovery Head Coach P.J. Sprunk. “Our goals as a program are playoffs and beyond. We want state championships. We want to be a dynasty. I’m a John Curtis guy. I played for Curtis and I respect everything they do and I model what they do over there for our program.”
“A lot of us have been waiting for this for a long time,” said senior defensive and and tight end Robert James. “We’ve been working, grinding all off-season and we’re just ready for a good season.”
“It sets an example for everybody else coming to this school,” said senior tight end Axel Varela.
Oh and what’s their mascot you ask? The Swamp Owls. A fitting nickname for this upstart program.
“It’s funny because we get a lot of questions about the Swamp Owl,” Sprunk said. “We really think it’s one of the coolest mascots in Louisiana. It’s basically a bird of prey who lives in the swamp and for us it’s almost like an omen because we’re growing from the ground up and we’re rising from the water.”
The stigma of a new program, is that they’ll be an easy win on the schedule for their opponents. But they’re fine with that.
“I actually like when people think, ‘Oh, we’re going to beat them’ or they’re little kids because when we actually beat them people will start seeing us differently and start taking us more seriously,” Varela said.
“Oh we’re definitely excited to prove them wrong,” James said. “We’ve already been through a couple of games where teams they see us as a new school so they already look at us as their step brothers. So every single game we just go out there with the mentality with a chip on our shoulder that we have to prove them wrong.”
