If you looked at the scores alone Friday night as Acadiana Christian took on Southwest Louisiana Homeschool in an end-of-spring scrimmage at New Iberia Senior High, it would have appeared that the visiting Knights were an impressive football team that would be considered a favorite to win the Association of Christian Educators of Louisiana 8 man football title come the fall.

After all the SWLA had twice as many scores as ACS, 8-4.

The reality was much different, however.

With only 13 players on the side, the Knights were using starters when the two teams were scrimmaging with second team players during that portion of the roughly 2 1/2 hour scrimmage.

When first team played first team, the Lions roared and scored five times while holding SWLA to only two scores, which came when the two teams were playing a series in the red zone, which is from the 20 yard line in to the end zone.

For the majority of the scrimmage, ACS held Southwest scoreless. which is what Acadiana Christian coach Dwight Fage wanted to see.

“I think defensively we played lights out,” Fage said. “We flew to the ball well, we tackled well and for the most part, held them out of the end zone.

“Offensively, we scored three or four times but with a senior-laden group, that’s what we expected. The bonus was that we got to get the second team in and the played a lot of snaps, which is only going to give them valuable experience for later on.”

The scrimmage was broken down into sections where ones played ones and twos played twos and then finished with a couple of red zone sections with both the ones and twos.

When the Lions went first team on first team, ACS controlled the scrimmage on both sides of the ball. When the second team got on the field, the Knights were able to use their experience to control that part of the scrimmage.

“He (SWLA) doesn’t have many kids on his team so we knew that he was going to play most of his starters during that part of the scrimmage,” Fage. “The main thing for us was we were able to get our second team players in the game and get them some experience.

“And as they played we started seeing a lot of improvement in our second team players as they got more and more comfortable with playing on the field.

“I’m just happy to have a second team. In years past I didn’t have a second team. It’s a testament to what God’s doing here and I’m happy they played well.”

Fage said a couple of players stood out during the scrimmage.

“I thought that Andrew Judice played well tonight on offense and defense,” the ACS coach said. “Wyatt (Deselles) played well on both sides of the ball tonight as well.”

Now the Lions head into summer workouts as they get ready for the ACEL season, which begins in the middle of August.

“We’ll take a little time off and start back the first week of June and try to get stronger and faster in the weight room,” Fage said. “We’ll also look into whether we can get some 5-on-5 work in somewhere as we build to the start of the new season.”