EDGARD — Two St. John the Baptist parish teams will face off against each other this Friday in week two of district play.

West St. John (2-4) will host Riverside Academy (4-1) Friday, and it has been a long time since they were district opponents.

“Playing in parish for district will hold a new set of challenges,” WSJ head football coach Brandon Walters said. “It gives us a chance to play some kids that my kids are more familiar with, that they know. They are around these kids and the likelihood of them interacting outside of football is very high. It proposes some new challenges for them. They are very excited to play against kids that they know. It’s going to be a good, good game.”

Riverside Academy football coach Bill Stubbs agreed his players are also excited about playing WSJ.

“A lot of these kids know each other,” Stubbs said. “It’s been kind of a rivalry throughout the years. Last year when we played (WSJ) it was a good, tough, hard-fought football game. I don’t suspect this year is going to be anything different.”

The WSJ Rams may have lost their last few games, but Walters assures fans they are not throwing in the towel.

“I said that they kind of quit last week’s game, but they aren’t those kinds of kids,” Walters said about his team. “They aren’t going to take the season, throw in the towel and say it’s all over. We are going to prepare for Riverside. It’s a home game for us. We know they are going to come in here smelling blood, so to speak, so we’re ready to defend our home. We are ready to defend West St. John. I think the kids are going to be up for the game.”

Stubbs said the Rebels are up to the challenge as well.

“From the beginning, we anticipated that this was going to be one of the big games of the season,” Stubbs said. “Nothing has changed. West St. John is a good, solid football team. They come from a storied program, so we’ve got to be ready for them. We have to prepare extremely well because WSJ has really good athletes. They can run, jump, catch, throw and they are well coached.

“It’s a better district this year than it has been in years past. It’s more competitive. I’m shocked by West St. John’s record right now because I certainly see them as a much, much, much better football team and better coached than what their record presents.”

Walters said WSJ’s four losses this season is definitely not normal for the program.

“Nobody is holding their head or feeling sad or sorry about the loss,” Walters said. “Of course, it’s a tough situation and definitely something new for us. We are going to play through it.

“Riverside has a lot of athletes. They have a lot of weapons on different sides of the field. They play sound, disciplined football. We just need to make sure we take our shots when they are available.”

Riverside defeated Newman last week, but Stubbs said his team isn’t perfect and still has a lot of work to do.

“I’m not surprised with how well we started district,” Stubbs said. “This is how we play. It’s who we are and it’s how we’ve been for the last couple of years. We played good in spots, but I don’t think it was perfect. We didn’t play a complete ball game. We’ve got to really assess what we are doing this week and try to get a little bit better.”

Stubbs said his teams’ biggest downfall has been focus.

“We need to work on maintaining focus throughout four quarters,” Stubbs said. “We need to work on playing our style of football, our brand of football, which is tough and hard-nosed. I thought that was absent against Newman.”

Stubbs said he plans on bringing focus to WSJ.

“We’re showing a very, very good balance offensively, which is important,” Stubbs said. “We are getting better in our kicking game, and we’ve got most of our guys back and healthy right now, which is important.”

Stubbs said the Rebels played well enough to win Friday, but that won’t be good enough moving forward, especially against WSJ.

“We don’t get caught up in the scoreboard,” Stubbs said. “We get caught up in the certain way that we play. When we take the field, we’ve got to do it in all four quarters, not just in pieces and parts. This is our personality. It’s the way we coach and the way the kids like to be. We didn’t play with emotion and a sense of urgency last week. We’ll get that back. We have too many mature kids who understand what we have to do to worry about that.”

By Courtney Griggs