BATON ROUGE - The city of New Iberia will be well represented in Tiger Stadium this year as three former standouts in city schools get ready for duty with LSU this year.

Former Westgate standout Jared Mitchell enters his sophomore year with the Tigers while former Catholic High standouts Mitch Joseph and Josh Dworaczyk prepare for their freshman years wearing the purple and gold.

"I still can't believe I'm here," said Dworaczyk. "I had to check my jersey to make sure that was my name across the back."

Advertisement

Mitchell, who led Westgate to the quarterfinals in football in 2005, returns for his second year with LSU.

Last year as a freshman, he played in eight games and caught two passes for 25 yards.

"It's been a lot of hard work," said Mitchell. "I think that people don't understand how much hard work we go through but it's part of the description and I'm enjoying the process.

"Working hard and getting better, that's what it's all about."

One of the things that he enjoyed last year was playing on the same field and sharing wide receiver duties with two first round NFL draft picks in Buster Davis and Dwayne Bowe and catching passes from a third in overall No. 1 pick JaMarcus Russell.

"I was looking forward to playing and hoping that I would but at the end of the season I sat down and watched the draft and seeing all our starters getting drafted in the first round it hit me," said Mitchell. "Whoa! I got a chance to play when we had this caliber of guys on our team. And we have the same caliber still here that have a chance to do that.

"I was proud of myself but it makes you want to work harder and get better yourself."

Mitchell learned a lot from Bowe and Davis and from former St. Martinville Senior High standout Early Doucet, who returns for his senior year.

"It's a great learning experience," said Mitchell.

"You get to watch those guys in practice and in games and see what type of attitude it takes to get to that point.

"It gives you some insight as to what it takes and I'm taking as much as possible."

The former Westgate athlete is looking forward to his second year at LSU.

"We have a lot of talent here and right now it's fun to come out and complete every day," said Mitchell. "I'll wait and see how the season turns out if I get to play more this year or not. Right now, I happy for the chance to compete and to get a fair chance to play.

"That's all you can ask for."

Mitchell, who hit .258 with three home runs and 21 RBIs last year while playing center field for the LSU baseball team, enjoys being a two-sport athlete.

"It's been fun," said Mitchell. "It's been a lot of work but I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm enjoying it here. It should be fun this year."

For Dworaczyk and Joseph, it's been a hectic start of their careers at LSU getting used to college life and to college football practices.

"So far it's been everything that I expected," said Joseph. "It's been fun. I like the environment here. It's a great team.

"The biggest adjustments is that the workouts and the practices are at a much quicker pace than high school. The practicing is longer and it's at a totally new level. It took me about a week to get used to it. I was sore after the first few practices."

Joseph isn't sure whether he will redshirt this year or not.

"Either way, it will help me," he said.

Dworaczyk has also had a busy summer at LSU.

"Summer was great, classes weren't bad and workouts went real well," said Dworaczyk. "I put on about 20 pounds and weigh about 290 right now.

"We got to put the jersey on, got to be in Tiger Stadium (Saturday) during the scrimmage and it's a feeling that now you're here and the season is right around the corner."

Dworaczyk also had to adjust from playing defensive end and offensive tackle in high school to offensive guard in college.

"That was the biggest adjustment," said the former CHS standout.

"The game is faster. I'm not only learning to play, I'm learning a new position also. I thought I was going to be an offensive tackle but I'm at offensive guard right now and really liking it."

He also got to play with the first team earlier in fall drills.

"We started off with the freshman and a select group of older guys for the first two practices," said Dworaczyk. "But me and two other linemen got called up to work with the varsity the day before we were supposed to practice with them.

"It was a great experience. I was expecting it to be a day of me getting totally run over by upper classmen but I was able to step it up and get used to the flow.

"The coaches are going to get on us if we make mistakes and now it's out job to recognized what we did wrong and not make the same mistakes. Once you realize that you're here, it's time to practice. It's not high school anymore, it's college football."