The regular season couldn’t have started off any worse for Catholic High Tuesday night as the Panthers played host to cross-town rival New Iberia Senior High.

The visiting Jackets scored three runs in their first at-bat of the game putting the Panthers in a hole right out the gate.

It didn’t last long.

In the bottom of the first, Catholic High rallied for four runs to retake the lead and never relinquished it in beating NISH 11-6 in the first varsity game of the 2023 season.

“Two is a number that I thought we could fight back from,” CHS coach David Jordan said after the win. “That third one kind of hurt a little bit.”

“But it wasn’t anything that there were doing great. We weren’t throwing strikes and throwing balls against the wall up there. Then we settled in and got back into it.”

Catholic High got back into it quickly. In addition to the four runs in the first, the Panthers added another four runs in the second to go up 8-3 and were able to maintain a decent lead over the Jackets, who entered the game with a win in their Monday opener against Westgate.

Luke Landry started for CHS and, after that rough start, settled down to pitch three innings and allowed four runs, two earned on four hits to get the win.

“I think he was a little excited to start and had the adrenaline pumping, kind of line opening night jitters,” Jordan said. “But he settled in after that and pitched well.”

The Panthers ended up with seven hits in the game with Jack Chauvin collecting three hits and scored two runs; Will Minvielle added a double and two RBIs for CHS and also pitched two innings and allowed three runs, two earned in the win.

For NISH, as mistake-free as it played Monday night, it was errors all over the place Tuesday as the Jackets committed eight errors in the loss. Something that head coach Eli Lewellyn was not too happy about.

“You can’t make that many defensive mistakes,” Lewellyn said. “I told the guys after the game that there were some plays that if we didn’t make some kind of of circus play, it could have been 10 or 11 errors in the scorebook.”

“The growing pains are going to happen with this group and we have to learn how to respond to that because it just started snowballing on us in the first two innings and it took us out of the game.”

Gerald Sonnier had two hits to lead NISH offensively as Kennedy Drexler added a hit, scored a run and knocked in two runs; Drew Rogers also had two hits and Mason Meyers had a hit and an RBI for NISH in the losing effort;

Meyers also took the loss on the hill as he allowed two earned runs on four hits in 1 2/3 innings.

“We have to have someone step up and make a play,” Lewellyn said. “I think in the end the game got a little too quick for them. For many of my kids it was the first varsity experience against a big cross-city rival. But it’s coming along for us.”