LOREAUVILLE — Chris Anthony rushed for 169 yards and two TDs, Calep Jacob threw for 132 yards and two touchdowns and Jaylyn James also scored twice on the ground to lead Loreauville High School to a 41-21 win over Central Catholic in the season opener for both football teams Friday at Tiger Stadium.

The Tigers (1-0) had to overcome a couple of blocked point-after tries and three blocked punts to win, and still have plenty to work on before next week’s district opener against Franklin, head coach Terry Martin said.

Anthony carried 20 times for the Tigers, who rushed for 214 yards to finish with 346 total yards.

“Chris had a great game,” Martin said. “He’s always run the ball hard. The biggest thing for him over the last two years is just holding onto (the ball).

“Every time we needed a big play, he seemed to come up with it. He had at least two runs of 50 yards or more.”

The Tigers had to scrap a lot of their gameplan when they saw what Central Catholic was doing on defense, Martin said.

“They came out in a very unconventional front on defense, which wasn’t what we were expecting,” he said. “I think because we threw it pretty successfully the week before against Erath in the scrimmage, they were a little more concerned with that than stopping the run, and our offensive line did a pretty good job against them.”

Jacob is showing progress as a passer, Martin said.

“In the past he would pull it down so quickly and just take off,” Martin said. “He’s still moving around in the pocket when he needs to but he’s doing a good job of keeping his eyes downfield. So hopefully he can continue.”

The coach said Jacob’s 31-yard touchdown pass to Aidan Dooley was thrown perfectly.

“Aidan … did a good job of staying focused on the ball,” Martin said. “When we went back and watched it in slow motion, the ball almost hit the free safety in his head. It went right over his head. When you have something that’ll block your view for a split second, catching a ball a lot of times becomes very difficult, but he did a good job catching it.”

Jacob also had a 20-yard TD pass to his brother Collin Jacob. On the play, Collin Jacob was the initial receiver the QB looked to on the left side.

“He looked at him, went through his next progression a little bit higher on the left, had to scramble out of the pocket, and Collin continued all the way over to the right side of the field, on the complete other side of the field from where he was, and Calep was able to get him the ball,” Martin said. “They do work well together, but it’s good to see other guys get involved.”

The line suffered a loss when a starter turned his ankle badly, forcing freshman Trace McHugh to play most of the game starting with the second series. Because most of the linemen play on both offense and defense, Martin said, they at times had to come out to get a break. At one point, the coach said, the Tigers had three freshmen playing on the line.

“We didn’t have much of a problem with our skill guys cramping and stuff like that, but a couple of our linemen had to come out a couple of times from cramping, but again, they always went back,” Martin said. “We were talking about it after, I guess it’s just because they don’t run as far as some of those skill guys do.”

Calep Jacob also converted a pair of 2-point conversion runs.

CCHS also passed for 132 yards with Freddie Calloway throwing two touchdown passes and Carter Williams adding at TD toss.

But Martin said there is a lot to work on yet, especially on special teams.

“I’ve never been in a game where we had three punts blocked,” the coach said. “It was a lot of things (on special teams). There was some snapping issues, some protection issues, just alignment. We weren’t aligned right.

“This is pretty embarrassing, but when our (starting) lineman went down, it took a while, a couple of blocked extra points before we realized we were giving them a short edge. Normally when we score, our offensive line stays in, it’s all the same guys, when we kick the PAT. It took a couple of times for it to get blocked before we actually realized, the kid that got hurt, we never replaced him with anybody if we were scoring touchdowns.

“I think it’s just a lot of rust — not being able to do what we normally do in the summer. Normally Thursdays in our summer workouts are our real big special teams day where we do a lot of things to try to cover those areas. It’s amazing we won. I think we had three PATs blocked and definitely we had three punts blocked. Normally you don’t win like that.”

Defensively the Tigers played pretty well, he said, and ran to the ball well, especially early.

“I think if we can get those things fixed, and just stay healthy, that’s the biggest thing,” he said. “That’s two weeks in a row we have a starter go down with a bad ankle sprain.

“Overall, just thankful to be playing. Normally we always talk about a lot of technical things and what we need to do to win, but last night it was just more about, we really don’t know if we’re going to play next week. It’s kind of a week to week thing for everybody. Looking online I think it was six or maybe eight games that were canceled across the state. So it was just let’s be thankful we’re playing because this all could stop next week.”