Catholic High shuts down Delcambre, 36-7

Published 4:00 pm Thursday, October 8, 2020

After opening the 2020 high school football season last week against traditional New Orleans-area power De La Salle, the Catholic High School Panthers opened District 7-2A play Wednesday night against Delcambre High ahead of a potential Southwest Louisiana landfall from Hurricane Delta.

But it wasn’t a hurricane wing that blew through Panther Stadium Wednesday night against Delcambre — it was the force of the CHS defense which shut down the visiting Panthers, forcing a couple of fumbles, setting up the offense and getting in on the scoring with a safety in Catholic High’s 36-7 win. The home Panthers improved to 1-1 on the season and 1-0 in district.

“I was proud of the way our guys competed tonight,” CHS first-year coach Scott Wattigny said. “We set the line of scrimmage up front. We were very physical. A couple of miscues on their part set us up.

“We tackled a lot better.”

After giving up 38 points in the loss to De La Salle last week, the CHS defense held Delcambre to one touchdown in the fourth quarter after building a 36-0 halftime lead over the visiting Panthers.

The CHS offense, which only scored 10 in the opening week loss, rolled to 36 points against DHS as Marco Austin and K.K. Reno each had two rushing touchdowns and the Panthers had 339 total yards of offense despite the fact that they worked on a short field for most of the night as the CHS defense kept giving the offense the ball.

“We’re not going to have a lot total offense because we were on a short field, which is a credit to the defense,” Wattigny said.

The new CHS coach also credited kickers Nick Boutte and Ashton Duplantis for their work, Boutte for his four touchdbacks and Duplantis for filpping the field on his punts

One of the things that really excited Wattigny was the success of the CHS passing game.

Reno completed 7 of 11 passes for 111 yards and a touchdown, to Layne Lipari.

“I thought we threw the ball very well,” Wattigny said. “That’s going to help us when teams have to honor the passing game and not concentrate on stopping the run.”

Delcambre’s defense played well enough to win the game, but the lack of offense hurt the visiting Panthers (1-1, 0-1).

Delcambre had 118 total yards of offense, the majority of which came in the second half as Wattigny played mostlly his reserves.

“That’s a good football team that we played tonight,” DHS coach Artie Liuzza said. “They played a tough football team last week and the score really didn’t indicate just how good Catholic High is.

“We knew that we were going to be in a struggle tonight and they best us. The good thing was that in the past three years we gave up 63, 63 and 70 points to Catholic High. Tonight we only gave up 36. That shows how far we have come as a team.”

Jamion Guy scored Delcambre’s only touchdown in the fourth quarter and led Delcambre with 45 yards rushing and 19 receiving.

But after scoring 25 points against Centerville the first week, DHS struggled to get even 7 against CHS.

“That’s why we play games against good opponents,” Liuzza said. “It exposes our weaknesses and shows us what we need to work on to get better. And we will get better from this.”

Both teams are home next week as CHS battles Ascension Episcopal and Delcambre takes on Franklin