Catholic High lacrosse players Brown and Schlegel named All-Americans

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Catholic High School is commonly known for its football, basketball, and baseball programs among others. Some of those sports have produced high school All-Americans, collegiate athletes, and even some professionals.

One program that isn’t as well known is lacrosse. Catholic High School has had a team for over 16 years now but for many of those seasons, the squad failed to produce nationally recognized talent.

That changed last year when Hudson Brown earned All-American status from USA Lacrosse Magazine. This past season Brown appeared on the list again but he was joined by his close friend and teammate Nathan Schlegel.

“He was stronger than me, faster than me, he was always someone I was chasing to get,” Schlegel said, who has played football and lacrosse with Brown since 6th grade. “He was making me better because of how he was, I always strived to be even with him or pass him up eventually.”

Brown not only inspired Schlegel, he also empowered his entire team which boosted the program.

“I wanted to leave the program better than I found it, so that’s how we went about it,” Brown said. “Just seeing all the younger guys looking up to you was something that I held close to me because I could never get caught off my game, I had to bring it everyday in practice and games so that I could bring someone up.”

Both Brown and Schlegel led by example. That was evidenced after a tough road loss in Texas. The team had cleaned up the sideline and prepared to get on the bus to travel back to Baton Rouge. Catholic High School’s head coach, George Hopkins, was speaking with a former faculty member at the school when he saw Brown and Schlegel do something ‘iconic.’

“They were the last to leave the field and they were each carrying a water cooler back to the bus,” Hopkins said. “I was talking to my colleague and I snapped a photo of these guys. To me it’s iconic because they’re the furthest thing from being a primadonna and they have every right to be a primadonna.”

That leadership raised the bar of the program and the team accomplished a lot under Brown and Schlegel’s watch. Catholic High School won the Louisiana State Championship in 2022 and made an appearance in the final game last year as well.

Brown and Schlegel both earned Academic All-American honors to complement their prowess on the field. Schlegel became the school’s second winner of the Bob Ross Award as well. The honor is given to the athlete that shows superior levels of commitment to their program, school, and community.

“You build a program around players,” said Hopkins. “Having these two young men has been absolutely transformative in the best possible way.”

The two plan to attend LSU in the fall and play club lacrosse.

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