The inaugural varsity football game for both Highland Baptist and Natchitoches Christian was not an easy thing for either school when the two teams met Thursday night.

To start with, Thursday’s rains drenched the field and players slipped several times while trying to make plays on offense and defense.

On top of that, both teams had some logistical problems to overcome.

The Highland Baptist defense swarms the point of attack during their game Thursday against Natchitoches Christian. - Lee Ball / The Daily Iberian Advertisement

Highland Baptist went into the game blind, so to speak, because coach Artie Liuzza had no film of his team’s opponent to prepare his team.

“It’s hard to prepare for a team when there’s no information,” said Liuzza. “Their coach told me that they were going to run from the I (formation) and throw in a little spread and that’s what he did.

“This first go-around through the teams we’re not going to have much film on teams, but during the second time around we’ll have film and it will be a whole lot easier to prepare. It’s an interesting thing going into a game blind.”

Natchitoches Christian Academy coach Langston Sinclair was even in a worse situation. This is the first year of football for the team and the Eagles played no practice games and only had a handful of practices to get ready.

In fact, Sinclair didn’t hand out equipment until Wednesday.

And he only has 11 players on the team.

“We did good,” Sinclair said. “We’re going to learn and we’ll be back.”

The NCA coach thought that it was mistakes that eventually cost the Eagles in the season opener.

“We lost because of our turnovers. We have to make better plays,” said Sinclair. “This game will help us out and prepare us.”

Highland’s players had to learn about the Eagles on the field.

“We’re not used to playing linebackers up on the line, we just had to go with it,” said linebacker Seth Woerner, whose stop of Eagle quarterback Keyeon Jenkins late in the game was key to the Bears’ win.

But even with that, both coaches were happy with the fact they played the game.

“It was good to just get out and play,” said Liuzza.

“We’ll be back and ready to play,” said Sinclair.