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Saints legends attended the “Battle of the Boot” as the South Plaquemines Hurricanes hosted the Belle Chasse Fighting Cardinals during the Louisiana Under the Lights High School Football game presented by Venture Capital on Friday, September 18, 2026.
Michael DeMocker/New Orleans Saints
Michael DeMocker/New Orleans Saints
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Sometimes a Friday night is more than a Friday night. A game is more than a game. And a rivalry is more than a rivalry.
For many in Plaquemines Parish, that describes the “Battle of the Boot” between Belle Chasse and South Plaquemines. It’s a game between the team from up the road and the team from down the road with a whole lot of close connections in between.
Louisiana is full of rivalries, but this one is a bit different. It was born because of a hurricane.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Plaquemines Parish had five football playing schools — Belle Chasse, Boothville-Venice, Port Sulphur, Buras and Phoenix. When schools re-opened after the storm, Belle Chasse returned as normal, Phoenix came back as a non-football school and the other three merged to create South Plaquemines. The students of the newly formed school voted on their new mascot and chose the Hurricanes.
“The kids came up with Hurricanes even though it’s tragic and it’s caused so much damage,” South Plaquemines principal Trichina Williams said. “But think about the back side of that, re-grouping, growing and coming together to rebuild. The perseverance. When we come together to get everything back to the way it was and even better than it was before.”
When South Plaquemines was created in 2006, just weeks after opening as a school, the Hurricanes took the field for their first football contest against Belle Chasse starting a rivalry that persists to this day.
South Plaquemines immediately was a force on the field for the rest of the state as the Hurricanes won back-to-back state championships in 2007 and 2008 and returned to the title game in 2009.
Current Hurricanes coach Lyle Fitte actually scored the first touchdown in the 2007 championship game.
“You see how much talent our parish actually had,” Fitte said.
The “Battle of the Boot” has been played nearly every year since then and continued last Friday night with Belle Chasse going down to South Plaquemines. This year, in a game that was selected as the Under the Lights Game of the Week presented by Venture Global, the Cardinals came out with a 35-12 victory over the Hurricanes, but it was more than just the result that mattered.
“Going into that game that week, it’s always been electric,” Fitte said. “The air smells different. You know it’s football season. I always get up for it and the kids are excited for it.”
That was evident on Friday night. As vehicles filled the parking lot at South Plaquemines starting in the afternoon just after school was let out, the tailgating began. Belle Chasse fans, South Plaquemines fans and even a sprinkle of blue-and-gold-clad Phoenix fans were in attendance.
It was standing room only with many fans lined up against the fences surrounding the track. Following the result, there were even some fans from the other sides who met players on the field — close friends, cousins, nephews — to say goodbye before driving off.
One thing that makes the rivalry unique is that it’s played between schools with distinctly different classifications. Belle Chase plays in Class 4A with an enrollment of more than 800 students while South Plaquemines has just over 200 students and competes in Class 1A.
Belle Chasse athletic director Josh Mire said that doesn’t matter on Friday nights, however.
“It’s important to keep the community together, to keep the up-the-road and down-the-road communities together. Just have something in common besides living in the same parish,” Mire said.
“They can always go back to these stories of past games and remember something. … But our student athletes know it’s no longer just a 1A school and a 4A school. It’s parish rivals going at each other. We’re going to get their best every year and they are going to get our best every year.”
