By Neal McClelland

The Daily Iberian

The defending Division IV state champion ESA Falcons start defense of last season’s title as the top-seed in Division IV as the LHSAA released the boys soccer playoff brackets Wednesday.

Only three teams qualified for the postseason this year but the potential is there for each team to go gfar into the playoffs.

The Catholic High Panthers enter the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in Division IV and the St. Martinville Senior High Tigers go into the postseason as the 12th seed in Division III.

ESA (14-0-2), the Division IV, District 3 champions, drew a first-round bye and will play host to the winner of 16-17 contest between Opelousas Catholic (5-9-2) and Houma Christian (12-8-1) in the seccond round.

All first round games must be played by Saturday and all second round games must be played by Thursday, Feb. 7

Catholic High (13-5-4) just missed out on being the second seed by a fraction of a point. Country Day fiinished the season with a power ranking of 12.73 and the Panthers finished at 12.64.

As the third seed, the Panthers will have a first round bye and play host to the winner of the 14-19 contest between Calvary Baptist (12-3-2) and Vermilion Catholic (7-8-1).

It is possible that both the Falcons and the Panthers will play district opponents in the second round and since ESA and Catholic High are on opposite sides of the bracket, the two long-time rivals could only meet in the championship game set for later in February at UI’s Ragin Cajun Soccer/Track Complex.

ESA beat CHS Monday night 4-3 to win the district championship.

“I’d love to have another shot at them in the championship game but there is a lot of soccer to play before we can even think about that,” said CHS senior Ben Tarantino about the possibility of a rematch. “I think that if we play the way that we’ve been playing we have a chance.”

In Division III, SMSH (9-7-5) will play host to the 21st seed New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy (9-7-2) with the winner advancing to play fifth seed E.D. White (15-5-2) in the second round.

No game time for the first round game was immediately available.

Three other Teche Area schools did not qualify for postseason play.

Erath (7-10-4) finished as the 27th seed in Division III while Westgate (9-11-1) finished as the 28h seed in Division II and New Iberia Senior High (5-17-0) was the 33rd seed in Division I.