The CHEF Patriots are the football team for the Christian Home Educators Fellowship, a home schooling organization that sponsors various athletics including, of course, football. As a home schooling organization, the football team does not compete in the LHSAA and is instead an independent team that competes with other independent teams in and out of the state of Louisiana as well as various teams in the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools, the MAIS. They have put together a few solid seasons under 4th year Head Coach Jason Whitehead, who has a combined 16-13 record at the school since 2021. The team is ready to go as another season begins.
“We spent some time in the spring doing our spring training. We ended up doing a spring game. This spring was the first time as far as I know we’ve put pads on during the spring, and then the first time we’ve done a spring game. We’ve done 7-on-7s in the past, but the spring game was a good addition, and I think it worked well to help guys get a feel for what it’s going to be like. It helps to get them motivated to spend a month of June, preparing for the season.”
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
The roster for the Patriots looks to be as strong as ever with a solid 9 seniors coming in to lead the team. Among those is quarterback Andon Berthelot who will be tasked with leading this offense once again under center. Alongside him in the backfield will be running back Brendan London, and Gridiron Bowl Invitee Chase McCall will be the leading receiver for them.
The 9 seniors are going to make up a big part of what we’re going to do. They’ve been around the program for a while. We’ve got some athletes – some guys that are quick, some guys that know their routes, and we’ve got a quarterback that is working hard. This will be his 2nd year taking the snaps, so I’m looking forward to our passing game coming around. Receiver Chase McCall is going to line up wide for us most of the time. He’s got really good breakaway speed after he catches the ball. We’ve got a slot who is new to the team, Kade Whitehead, who is really quick, really strong, very shifty. We’re going to put him in a position to make a few catches but also get into the backfield a little bit.
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
Schematically, Coach Whitehead will get to enjoy the experience of the players on the offensive side of the ball. On top of the basic stuff they have run for years, there is the potential for new wrinkles to be added because the guys playing on offense are so experienced with the system. A familiar and successful defense awaits the Patriots as well.
“We run a lot of gap scheme. So you’ll see typical power-counter-iso type stuff. We’ll also run a little GT counter. We do have some read option-type stuff that we’ll run off of all of those plays.”
We’ll go odd front. 3-4 is our base with typically a 2-high structure. We’ve done a good job in past years of locking people down. Our strength is going to be our linebackers. We have some guys who are really strong at defensive end, who play the style of end that we need for our 3-4 front, so that’s good. We count on our safeties to be some of our primary tacklers, so we’ve got some good guys lined up to do that as well.”
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
As an independent school, scheduling looks quite different for CHEF than it does for basically every other school in our Media Day series. Their schedules are year to year, consistently feature teams outside the state of Louisiana, and begin much earlier in the year. They’ve actually already played 3 games at this point before the LHSAA season has even begun. Perhaps most notable was the trip the team made to the Houston area to play the Northside Lions in their 2nd game of the season on August 23rd. While the rest of the state was still worrying about scrimmages, the CHEF Patriots were already going to work and making a long trek to do so.
The Patriots have started the season 1-2, but they also already have a blowout win over Acadiana Christian, their most common opponent and biggest rival. The two teams have played each other at least twice every year since 2017.
“This year, we’ve got a heavy MAIS schedule. So we’ll play teams like Lamar School, Wayne Academy, Amite School Center, and Centreville Academy.”
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
CHEF’s unique status as an organization for homeschooling means the dynamic between head coach and administrative staff is fundamentally different from what you would see as a typical high school.
“One of the big things that CHEF does is provide clubs and sports for high school students. The entire organization is volunteer led. We’ve got volunteer coaches, and it takes a lot to run a football team and football program. We have a manager, our vice president gets really involved, our parents get really involved in making things happen, whether its setting up concessions or getting equipment set up. I spend most of my time with scheduling, with video and scheme, and setting up practice plans.”
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
In the past, the Patriots have struggled to schedule a full 10 game season for their team because of the lack of independents that were nearby in the area. However, things have improved on that front recently.
“This year, we were contacted by multiple teams, whether it’s the MAIS teams looking for someone to play in their jamboree, or whether it’s season games. That was refreshing to see that we are being noticed and people are recognizing the level of football that we play, and wanting to schedule us.”
CHEF Head Coach Jason Whitehead
Click HERE to read all of our GF Media Day Previews!
You must be logged in to post a comment.