Cat Fight: Tigers’ get the better of rival Panthers in district play

Published 8:00 am Sunday, October 30, 2022

Evan Simon’s fourth quarter interception capped a phenomenal Loreauville performance when they faced off against district rival Catholic High on Thursday night.

The Tigers entered the game with a 4-4 (2-1) record, coming off a 24-0 loss to Ascension Episcopal in District 8-2A play. The Panthers began the season with a four-game losing streak, but have since bounced back to secure victories over Eunice, Ascension, and Delcambre to move to 3-5 this season.

Loreauville head coach Terry Martin said that despite the differences in performance, records don’t matter when his team plays the Panthers.

“The records go out the window, absolutely,” he said. “I’m just glad that it’s like this right now, because when I got here and a little before it was pretty lopsided. It makes for a lot of excitement each year and something to look forward to.”

The Tigers began the game with a few problems on offense, facing two fourth down situations that Martin gambled on to keep their opening drive alive. With seven minutes elapsed in the first quarter, sophomore quarterback Hayden Benoit found senior Landon Lancon in space to score the Tigers’ first touchdown of the night.

Martin said that going for it in the fourth-down situations made sense, especially to build confidence in the first quarter.

“It was short and I think when it’s that close, it gives them a lot of confidence and makes them feel good,” Martin said. “I thought it was close enough and there were some areas where we had a chance (to convert).”

Catholic High answered back with a 27-yard field goal by Bennet Boudreaux, followed by a crucial interception by Catholic High sophomore Jaiden Mitchell that gave the Panthers excellent field position to secure the lead before halftime. Christopher Green brought down a well-thrown pass from senior quarterback Luke Landry to give the Panthers the lead for the first time, but it would be short-lived as Loreauville scored with a minute left in the half from a quarterback run by Benoit. The Tigers missed the PAT kick, leaving them with a narrow 13-10 lead going into the break.

CHS senior William Russell added another Panther touchdown in the third quarter via a 22-yard pass from Landry, but a huge kickoff return by freshman Blake Delcambre brought the Tigers down to the Catholic 20-yard line. Benoit added his second rushing touchdown to regain the lead.

Martin said that he had planned to give Delcambre a few snaps at quarterback and was impressed with his excellent kickoff return.

“I planned to put him at quarterback, he’s a dynamic athlete and he’s gotten better and better at throwing the ball but man can he run,” Martin explained. “He was the opening leg of our 4×100 and 4×200 as an eighth grader, so I planned to use him and he had a hell of a game.”

Both teams found themselves unable to move the ball downfield in the fourth quarter as they traded punts back and forth. The Panthers, chasing Loreauville’s three-point lead, faced a crucial third-and-15 situation with just over a minute remaining. Loreauville running back Evan Simon, who had spent most of the game moving the ball forward for the Tigers on offense, took up a spot in the backfield as the Tigers desperately looked to hold on to their narrow lead.

Simon’s hard work paid off as the senior recovered a tipped pass intended for Jack Chauvin. Despite a bit of confusion from the Loreauville sideline that resulted in a wasted quarterback kneel, the Tigers were able to burn off the remaining seconds to secure the win.

“I think you have to give both teams a lot of credit, they both played as hard as they can play,” said Martin after the game. “There were mistakes made on both sides, in fact we thought they were out of timeouts so that’s why we took a knee but we looked stupid because they had two timeouts left. Thank god we ended up holding on at the end.”

Simon ended the game with 93 yards from 19 carries and three receptions. Despite being targeted heavily by the Catholic High defense, Martin said that his running back did a good job.

“Evan, they played him pretty tough but he came in on defense and made an interception, so that worked out really well.”

Benoit went 10/19 for 107 yards and one touchdown, adding another 11 yards and two TDs on the ground.

Landon Lancon led the Tigers in receiving, picking up 57 yards from four catches and one touchdown.

Catholic High head coach Scott Wattigny said that his team did a good job at stopping the Tigers’ offensive threats, but gave up key plays that proved to be the difference on Thursday.

“We had to do a good job of stopping No. 22 (Simon) and, to be honest, I thought we did a good job of doing that,” Wattigny said. “It was just explosive plays; No. 7 (Lancon) did a good job on that first touchdown. I felt like when they missed that extra point and they squandered that bad snap, I thought we had the momentum. What set up two big scores was special teams, they played on our side of the field and instead of making them have to go 80 (yards) they had to go 50.”

Wattigny said that the loss hurts, especially given how close the team has been to winning this season.

“This one is tough. My first year was really tough too, but this one is tough because we had a chance,” he explained. “They’re in the driver’s seat now and we’re not. We’re going to be under .500 now and we’re fighting to be 4-6 on Senior Night against West St. Mary. Looking at the holistic of our season, we played some real tough competition but there’s three games that I can look at where if the ball maybe goes a different way and we’re sitting close to being a 7-3 football team.”

As each coach looks ahead to the remainder of the regular season and the playoffs, Loreauville is still trying to figure out the new LHSAA playoff procedures.

“I’m still trying to figure out how this thing happened with the playoff format,” Martin said. “Whether we do it or not, I couldn’t really care less, it’s just that I don’t understand how something that’s voted in by the principals can be changed like that. If it stays like that, I think it creates even more questions, especially for schools like us that are smaller. We’ll do whatever we have to do. I’m just going to be happy to be playing one more game. We have another big game next week and the question now is can we play better for two weeks in a row. Every year when we play Delcambre, it’s like they’re at another level. It’s always a tough game, but it’s going to be our Senior Night so I hope that helps them focus a little bit. I think, with this team, we don’t always come back to play the week following a win.”

Wattigny said that he is hoping that next week’s opponent, West St. Mary, will be able to field a team following an outbreak of illness at the school that gave the Wolfpack a Week 9 forfeit loss against Franklin.

“I sure hope not,” Wattigny said about the possibility of West St. Mary having to forfeit their Week 10 game. “In every other sport, you suffer a tough loss and you can bounce right back and kind of forget about it. Football is one of those that’s tough because you have to swallow that pill for seven days. If this is our reality and we don’t get that opportunity to play and get this out of our heads, it would not be ideal for us. I know they’re struggling right now, they’ve got the flu and Franklin got themselves a forfeit win, but I want us to play. It would be great to play a home playoff game after playing Week 10, not waiting from Week 9 until Week 11. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, but they did ask us to trade film , so I assume they’re getting ready to come and play against us.”

When asked whether or not he thought moving the game up to Thursday caused his team any problems, Wattigny said that he believed it to be the best decision given the weather uncertainty on Friday.

“I have a little PTSD from last year. We were getting ready to go toe-to-toe with each other last year, the atmosphere was electric, and we had to postpone the game and pushed it back to Saturday and we wound up losing 12-10,” Wattigny said. “That’s kind of been the snowball, really since I’ve gotten here. I’m hoping that it was the right decision (to move the game up to Thursday) and that it monsoons tomorrow to make me feel better about the decision. Tonight was great in terms of football, nobody wants to be in the slop. It’s about controlling the controllable and you can’t predict the weather. I’m not going to sit here and say that because we moved it up to Thursday that it caused some problems. I thought the kids did well, we just gave up some explosive plays. That’s two weeks in a row now where we’ve given up explosive plays and found ourselves on the opposite side. I know our kids are disappointed, just as much as the fans and the coaches are.”

Luke Landry went 11/18 for 132 yards and two touchdowns against Loreauville. Denym Mason (9 carries, 42 yards) and Javon Brown (8 carries, 40 yards) both moved the ball well on the ground for the Panthers.

Jack Chauvin (7 receptions, 67 yards), Christopher Green (2 receptions, 37 yards, 1 TD) and William Russell (2 receptions, 28 yards, 1 TD) led the team in receiving.

The Panthers are scheduled to host West St. Mary on Friday, Nov 4 for their final regular season game.

Loreauville will host Delcambre the same night. The Tigers are currently tied in district play with Ascension and Franklin, who both have 3-1 records in district as well. Next week’s game will determine whether or not Loreauville can secure back-to-back district championships. Ascension will play Franklin in Week 10.