All the practices, scrimmages, spring games, summer workouts and jamborees come down to this for Highland Baptist Christian School.

Thursday at 6 p.m. at New Iberia Senior High, the Bears take the field for the first varsity game in school history.

For one player, it’s going to be an interesting experience.

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“Up to now it’s basically been practice,” said running back Logan Dugas, one of only two seniors on the team this year. “I don’t know the emotions that are going to go through my head.

“It’s going to be insane. I’m going to have to push them aside and keep going forward.”

For the head coach, it’s going to be almost a relief.

“I’m excited for the community,” said Artie Liuzza. “These people have been waiting for football for a long time and finally they are going get football. It’s going to be a fun thing for the community.

“They’ve really rallied around these guys and hopefully we can pull out a win for them.”

The Bears, playing their inaugural season in the Louisiana Christian School Athletic Association, play host to Natchitoches Christian Thursday to open a 10-game campaign.

Last year, Highland Baptist played a middle school schedule in its first year of football. Now the team will play high school football with a roster of 14 kids including two seniors, two juniors, six sophomores, one freshman and three eighth graders.

“The good news is that we’ve improved every time we’ve walked on the field,” said Liuzza. “That’s what we have to do. Every time we walk in between those lines we have to improve. The kids are showing that they are willing to work hard enough to improve and that’s all I can ask of them right now.”

Last week in the LCSAA jamboree held at Lafayette Christian Academy, the Bears dropped two games, 32-0 to Heritage Christian and 8-6 to Acadiana Home School.

Liuzza thought that his team played well in the second game but that the team was stunned in the first game because Heritage returned a punt and an interception for a touchdown early in the contest that put the Bears in hole they couldn’t get out of.

In the second game, Highland had the lead but Acadiana Home School scored on the last play of the game and made a 2-point conversion to pull out the win.

“We challenged (them) in between games to come out with intensity,” said Liuzza. “On film, we saw a lot guys doing what we talk about in practice so there were a lot of good things to come out of that second game.”

Liuzza said that he’s going into the game somewhat at a disadvantage because Natchitoches didn’t play a scrimmage on in the jamboree. The Natchitoches coach told Liuzza that the team plans to run out of a power-I formation on offense and be multiple on defense.

“We’re going to go out there and see what comes at us, play hard and make adjustments as we go,” said Liuzza.