by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
WATSON – The 2024 LHSAA’s state powerlifting championships were conducted without Live Oak coach Cash Littlefield present on the state’s biggest stage because he didn’t have anyone competing. The year before, in his first season, the Lady Eagles had one participant.
While the first two years of Littlefield’s tenure were rather nondescript, he continued to mold his program with better days ahead.
Live Oak had four state qualifiers last year – three freshmen and a sophomore – and the Lady Eagles wound up tied for seventh in the team standings with St. Amant. West Monroe was the state champion with 40 points.
For a former baseball assistant at Union Parish who took over the school’s powerlifting program four years ago, Littlefield experienced the ecstasy that comes with watching a state championship unfold.
Live Oak sent 10 lifters to LHSAA’s state championships, where the Division I portion of the meet took place on March 28 and crowned a new state champion.
For the first time in school history, Live Oak, led by a trio of three individual state champions, compiled 79 points to edge defending champion West Monroe (77), followed by Destrehan (71), Covington (64), and Denham Springs (43).
“I’m just really happy for the girls,” Littlefield said. “They’re an emotional group. They’re a really fun group. If you come into their (athletics) class at third hour, you may see line dancing. You might hear rock and roll or rap. They’re always going to have fun. They wear their emotions on their sleeves.”
The state championship was the second in the school’s history, where Live Oak’s softball team won the Class 4A state title in 1995.
“There were so many tears,” Littlefield said. “Getting to see them celebrate and knowing they had done something special for Live Oak that hadn’t been done by any team in a long time was really special. It was special for me because it was the senior group that had started with me. All of the girls helped contribute. It was really awesome to see. They love and support each other.”
Live Oak’s girls had one qualifier in Littlefield’s first year and none the following year.
“I didn’t have anybody lifting, so I didn’t go,” Littlefield said of the 2024 state meet. “To see the girls winning a state championship, there’s nothing I did different. They’re good lifters. They worked their butts off.
The eventual cornerstones of the program – Kaila Maher, Brynn Catalano, and Jenna Robertson – were freshmen who were a part of last year’s team that had two of eight seniors join them at the state championships.
Robertson was the 198-pound state runner-up with 935 total pounds. The Lady Eagles also had Catalano in third at 123 pounds (825 total weight), and Maher was fourth at 97 pounds (550). Sophomore Kyla Scott was another key member, finishing in eighth at 114 pounds (620).
The Lady Eagles fed off the momentum created by last year’s team, and Littlefield was generating the kind of synergy that paid off with more than 70 lifters – boys and girls – in his program.
“We knew we had some talented girls,” Littlefield said.
Live Oak added a couple of key pieces that weren’t part of the program the previous season.
Junior Lilli Jeansonne was a track-specific athlete whom Littlefield became intrigued with during her track workouts. Another junior, Harmonee Lafayette, also joined this year’s team and both contributed to the team’s overall success.
District powerlifting titles are determined by the combined efforts of the boys and girls, which Live Oak won, setting the stage for the program’s memorable run.
The girls were actually the district’s third top team, but the Lady Eagles are part of a competitive group that includes Denham Springs, Dutchtown, and St. Amant.
“Me and (Denham Springs coach) Joe Ryan joked that winning district is harder than winning regionals,” Littlefield said.
Live Oak outpointed parish rival Denham Springs to win the East Regional crown, adding to its momentum from district competition.
“They really turned it on at regionals,” Littlefield said. “They had a great performance.”
Littlefield was part of the football coaching staff at Union Parish in Farmerville before taking his current position at Live Oak.
The Farmers have long been a staple of success under head coach Joe Spatafora, whose programs incurred back-to-back Class 3A state runner-up finishes to Madison Prep in 2020 and Sterlington in ’21.
“I’ve always heard to win a state championship, so many things have got to go your way,” Littlefield said. “I realized that at Union. The ball didn’t bounce our way a couple of times and bounced Sterlington’s way (26-24 victory). If they didn’t do video replay in the Superdome, we win a state championship. In the 14 games prior to the Superdome, that’s a catch.”
Littlefield was cautiously optimistic about his team’s chances at the school’s first state championship when Live Oak was the projected winner coming out of regionals.
But there was plenty of competition waiting from West Monroe, Destrehan, Covington, and Denham Springs.
“The girls gave themselves the opportunity, and that’s the cool thing,” he said. “You do the math, and you tell your girls that this is an opportunity to do something special, but you have to wait a month. We knew we had a chance.”
Live Oak was equipped to win a state title, qualifying 10 lifters with another serving as an alternate. It was quite a swing for the program, which had one qualifier three years before and none the following season.
Littlefield compared the month-long gap between regionals and state in powerlifting to that of the College Football Playoff, where teams, who do not play in their respective conference championships and receive opening-round byes, have a five-week opening until playing their quarterfinal.
The wait is a week shorter for those teams playing opening-round contests.
“It’s a long wait,” he said.
Live Oak got production from all of its lifters. Seniors Lauren Reviere was eighth at 105 pounds with a total weight of 545 pounds, and Olivia Fontenot placed third at 123 pounds with a total weight of 730 pounds.
Fontenot provided the first variable in Live Oak’s state title run, a lifter projected to finish sixth or seventh, but rallied ahead of two lifters from Destrehan for third place. A PR of 295 pounds in the squat, and was sixth going into the deadlift, where her 295-pound effort vaulted her to third overall.
“I told her that if we’re going to do this thing,” Littlefield said to Fontenot, “that she was going to be a huge part of it if you can jump these girls in front of you. It was kind of that lift we thought where we had a chance to do it.”
Newcomers such as Jeansonne and Lafayette finished fourth and eighth, respectively, adding to Live Oak’s point total.
Sophomore Izabella Hill came through at 132 pounds with a fifth-place showing. Her total weight of 785 pounds was a 300-pound improvement over last year’s appearance at the state meet.
Twin sisters Kayla (675) and Kyla (660), both juniors, were second and fourth, respectively, at 114 pounds. For Kyla, it was an improvement of four spots from 2025, while Kayla didn’t qualify last year.
“We don’t win without all of them,” Littlefield said.
The three freshmen standouts of a year ago were even better as sophomores, each producing PRs under the brightest lights.
“They all had the best meets they’ve ever had, and they all required it,” Littlefield said.
Powered by a 250-pound squad, Maher won one of the team’s three state individual champions with her 590-pound total at 97 pounds. Catalano set the state’s record of 370 pounds in the bench and won the 123-pound title with a total of 875 pounds.
Robertson had never cracked the 1,000-pound barrier before but exceeded that with 1,020 pounds and won the 198-pound division.
While Maher outdueled another competitor from West Monroe to help create space in the team race, Robertson’s triumphant performance proved critical at 198 pounds.
A year after her second place with 935 pounds at the same weight, Robertson had two competitors from West Monroe breathing down her neck.
Robertson had lifts of 425 (squat), 340 (deadlift), and 255 (bench), but Live Oak had to withstand a failed attempt from West Monroe on the deadlift that helped solidify the Lady Eagles’ two-point margin over the Lady Rebels.
“Layla (Whiting) almost gets to lock the deadlift,” Littlefield said of the West Monroe lifter who wound up second to Robertson.
“It slips out of her hand, and that was it to win. If she locks that out, Layla beats Jenna, and we get second. She was that close and another one of those things that had to go our way.”
