VACHERIE — The West St. John High Rams got off to a strong start in Thursday night’s Thibodaux Regional Medical Center River Parishes Jamboree against Donaldsonville.

Now they need to work on finishing.

The Rams built a 13-0 lead in the first half  with quarterback D’Andre Gaudia throwing a 36-yard touchdown pass to Aason Moll on the second possession to cap an 11-play, 87-yard drive.

Following a Donaldsonville fumble, Niko Davis scored from the 5-yard line with 1:29 remaining.

The start of the second half was delayed by lightning, then play was halted after just a few minutes of play for another 30 minutes.

When the teams returned to the field, Donaldsonville found the momentum.

Jaylen Williams scored on a 36-yard touchdown with 8:25 remaining in the game, and the Tigers successfully completed a 2-point conversion to make it 13-8.

West St. John fumbled the ball away on the first play of its next drive with the Tigers recovering at the Rams’ 31-yard line.

Jemon Pleasant scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 10-yard run with 5:22 remaining, then ran for the 2-point conversion to put the Tigers ahead 16-13.

West St. John could not answer but did manage to hold the Tigers to inside their own 20. On fourth down with 36 seconds remaining, the team elected to take the safety to make the score 16-15.

The Rams had two more chances after Dontrell Davis returned the ensuing kick to the Donaldsonville 37, but Gaudia threw incomplete both times to end the game.

“It was very disappointing,” Rams coach Brandon Walters said. “We jumped out on them. We did what we wanted to do in the first half. I liked most of it.”

Walters said the nearly hour-long lightning delay affected his players.

“The delay kind of took a little out of us but we can’t make excuses,” he said. “We just didn’t tackle well. They didn’t do anything different. They didn’t do anything special. They kept doing what they do, and we did not respond by making our tackles and our plays and the things that we did earlier.”

Walters said he was able to see a lot of players in action.

“We shuffled some guys around to try and get some looks at what they could do and it kind of hurt us,” he said. “At least we got a chance to see what we can and cannot do. Definitely we want to be on the win side of our experiments. It showed us we’re not as good as we think we are. We’re not where we need to be.”

St. Charles 29, St. Thomas Aquinas 0

With the threat of Hurricane Harvey looming in the Gulf, the Comets elected to play their jamboree game a day early.

Then they scored early and often while holding St. Thomas Aquinas to -13 yards of total offense.

St. Charles opened the game with a 13-play, 73-yard drive capped by a 1-yard quarterback sneak by Lloyd Nash. He then threw to Joe Chiarella for a 2-point conversion with 6:56 remaining in the first half.

After stuffing the Falcons on three downs, Chiarella blocked a punt.

Trey Joseph recovered the ball in the endzone for a touchdown to give the Comets a 15-0 lead heading into halftime.

In the second half, Nash led the Comets on a 5-play, 60-yard drive capped by a 38-yard touchdown pass to Dylan Blystad to make it 22-0.

St. Thomas Aquinas got its first first down on its fourth drive, but still was forced to punt. Chiarella scored on a 15-yard run at the 7:30 mark to make it 29-0.