VILLE PLATTE – After 20 years in the coaching profession, Church Point’s Rob Pool figured he had experienced about as much to be experienced in a football game.

Until Friday.

With his Bears leading the Ville Platte Bulldogs, who were celebrating homecoming, 14-0 with nine minutes remaining in the second quarter, play was stopped as the referees convened to discuss a flag that was thrown.

During that stoppage, Pool was informed by one of his coaches on the sideline that “something is going on over there.”

Seconds later, Pool noticed the Bulldogs’ sideline - players, coaches and managers – run for the locker room.

“All of the kids are running. Their bench started running toward the locker room, so we just followed suit because you don’t know what’s going on in that situation.”

The raucous was a result of a shooting that took place behind the stands on the home side, leaving one person dead and two others injured.

“I didn’t hear any gunshots initially,” Pool said. “You can hear them on the people’s recordings, but we didn’t hear anything. We just knew everybody was vacating their side, so we did the same thing.

"You don't really know if it is something really going on that's serious or is it just a knee-jerk reaction when somebody's running, you just run," Pool continued. "We live in a society where this stuff is not uncommon and stuff happens all the time. So, you just have to get everybody away from whatever's going on and then figure it out later."

Considering the visitors locker room was located beneath the stands on their side of the field, the Bears didn’t have far to go to get to safety, Pool said.

Prior to the game, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association requires a Pregame Administrative Conference (PAC) meeting where safety protocol – among other things – are discussed.

“In that meeting, you go over emergency action plans if something happens,” Pool said. “You just get everybody to their locker rooms and get everybody out of harms way. So, as soon as we had the issue we just went ahead and followed that. We knew where we were going, and we got our spirit groups back on the buses.”

Pool said there weren’t any conversations about the incident nor was anyone visibly shaken.

Despite the Bears leading, the game was deemed a no-contest and will not be resumed or rescheduled later, leaving both Church Point and the Bulldogs with a nine-game schedule.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Pool said of losing a game on the schedule. “We just move on to the next week.”