The Airline Vikings improved to 2-0 with a 40-21 victory over the Byrd Yellow Jackets Thursday night at Lee Hedges Stadium.
While both teams are in District 1-5A, the game won’t count in the standings because of the district’s new six-game format.
Airline has defeated Byrd five straight years. The Vikings are 2-0 under Head Coach Justin Scogin for the fourth straight year.
Scogin thought his team played better Thursday than in last week’s 48-42 season-opening victory over Wossman.
“I thought we played pretty well tonight just all the way around,” he said. “Last week we kind of played in spurts, especially offensively. where we stalled out, and, you know, tonight, we had guys that just, man, made phenomenal plays.@
Among those was quarterback Chase Williams. According to stats kept for the KWKH radio broadcast, Williams completed 20-of-30 passes for 266 yards and three touchdowns. His 5-yard touchdown run to the pylon with 4:04 left in the game gave the Vikings a 40-14 lead.
Two of his TD passes went to Preston Hughes, who caught eight passes for 112 yards.
Caleb Nunn also had a big night. He caught four passes for 64 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 47 yards and a TD.
Chris Hart rushed for 58 yards on 13 carries and scored a touchdown. Sir’Charles Marshall had a big catch on fourth down to keep a drive alive.
Nunn’s 25-yard touchdown run with 10 seconds left in the second quarter enabled the Vikings to take a 26-14 lead into the locker room at halftime.
That came after Desmond Curry intercepted a pass in Airline territory and returned it 45 yards
Scogin said that play was one of the game’s biggest.
“It kind of got us rolling,” he said. “At that point, they were kind of milking the clock, getting some getting some timely first downs, and he picked it off with about 50 seconds left in the half and we were able to score on a great run, by Caleb Nunn which was set up by a phenomenal block from Preston Hughes and, obviously, all the offensive linemen.”
Last week, a fumble just before the half costs the Vikings.
“I think we kind of flipped it as far as having a horrible end to the half,” Scogin said. “That luckily wasn’t us this week.”
Byrd’s Christian Maxie, who rushed for a Shreveport-Bossier City record 429 yards last week, gained 265 yards on 24 carries and scored two touchdowns. But 88 of those yards came against backups late in the game.
“Defensively, we did a phenomenal job in the second half of just kind of shutting their offense down,” Scogin said.
Airline travels to Little Rock, Ark., next Friday to face Pulaski Academy (1-1).