Staying the course: TLU secure third regular season conference title after tragedy and heartbreak

The Texas Lutheran Bulldogs football team has claimed its third consecutive Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) regular-season championship.

Saturday’s win against Centenary secured the Bulldogs’ second undefeated home season since 2014. The team will face conference rival Hendrix on the road this Saturday. The Bulldogs defeated the Warriors earlier this season, 34-0.

Head coach Neal LaHue credits his team’s work ethic and dominant defense for its success.

“We have a very experienced and talented defense. A lot of older guys, and they’ve done a great job,” said LaHue. “We’re first or second in the country in interceptions at 28 or something like that. We have a young man that’s broken the NCAA record in pick sixes at five, and so we’ve had a lot of turnovers, and they’ve kept us in every ballgame.”

The Bulldogs are also playing through heartbreak and tragedy after losing two of their own, A’Jean Augustine and Deyreck Dean, in a car accident last week.

“I mean, to lose one of your brothers and to have to bury him and to play a game two days, three days later, I think is insane, you know what I mean?” said Troy Tomaselli, a senior defensive back for the Bulldogs. Tomaselli lost his roommate, Dean, in the accident. Augustine also lived upstairs.

“I think all of us have been leaning on each other, pushing each other. We know what’s forward, what’s at step. We know the goals we have. We’re not going to let anything get in the way of those goals,” Tomaselli added.

The team said that, through this difficult time, all they can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep showing up for their teammates.

The Bulldogs will kick off against the Warriors on the road at 3 p.m. Saturday at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas.