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ERATH — When Erath’s passing game stalled after a hot start, the Bobcats reverted to a power run game to propel them to a 35-20 win over the Vinton Lions on homecoming night at Robert J. Segura Sr. Memorial Stadium.
Behind 120 yards and two touchdowns from Blake Dautreuil, Erath ran for 204 yards, including 119 yards for the team in the second half.
Erath head coach Eric LeBlanc said the effort the Bobcats have been putting into preparation and games this year paid off with a win on Friday.
“I thought the kids played hard,” he said. “The kids played well. The effort and energy was there. It wasn’t pretty, but we found a way to do something we hadn’t done this year, and that’s put a win in the column.”
Mason Hebert (21 yards on five runs) and quarterback Lynkon Romero (17 yards on five rushes) also ran for touchdowns, and Landon Lemaire added 47 yards on only four carries.
“We haven’t been feeling it with the pass the last couple of weeks, so we kind of felt like we needed to go back to our roots and fill it up as a team,” Hebert said.
Romero completed his first six pass attempts, helping the Bobcats jump out to a 15-0 lead in the first quarter. Romero completed two passes on Erath’s second possession, and Dautreuil followed that with runs of nine and 23 yards, the last good for a touchdown, and Payton Pickens kicked the point-after for a 7-0 lead with 7:15 left in the opening period.
After forcing a punt, the Bobcats took over again near midfield. After a penalty, Romero connected with Cameron Soirez for 9 yards and then hit Lemaire for 33 yards to the 14. Romero, who passed for 98 yards, kept the ball on the next play for a 14-yard touchdown run. The Bobcats went for 2 after a penalty before the PAT attempt, and Brayden Landry carried in for a 15-0 lead with 5:40 left in the half.
But the Lions wouldn’t go down without a fight. Receiver Freddie Budwine proved nearly unstoppable on the night, with quarterback Braylon Beard frequently lobbing the ball up in his direction, as often as not resulting in a catch by Budwine, who’d leap up over defenders to make the catch.
Budwine had three receptions on Vinton’s ensuing drive for a total of 57 yards, including a 22-yard TD over a defensive back. The 2-point conversion pass to Budwine made it 15-8.
Budwine finished the night with 10 catches for 206 yards and two TDs, helping the Lions to 291 passing yards despite completing only 14 of 34 pass attempts.
“We struggled early,” LeBlanc said. “They had a great player in No. 3 out there (Budwine). He’s a really athletic kid. You could see him go up there and get it. He went up and got a lot of balls. A couple of our DBs had a chance to make some plays and didn’t, and then sometimes we did. It seemed like whenever our defense would make a play, we’d struggle on offense and then we’d have to turn it back over with a punt. We couldn’t get the ball rolling.”
The Lions pulled to within a point with a six-play scoring drive late in the second quarter. Passes of 28 yards to Landon Harbert and 33 yards to Budwine gave Vinton a first down at Erath’s eight. Three straight keepers by Jerryckson Gonzalez resulted in a touchdown, but Erath’s Torrien Alfred broke up a pass to Budwine on a 2-point try to help the Bobcats maintain their lead at 15-14.
The Bobcats began to pull away in the second half. After a fumble and an exchange of punts to start the third quarter, Erath got going with a 31-yard run by Dautreuil to the Vinton 10-yard line. Hebert carried two straight times from there, getting in on a four-yard run with 7:5 to go for a 22-14 lead following Pickens’ PAT.
“The second half we made some adjustments and kind of put a stop to it on defense, and we moved the ball a lot better on offense the second half,” LeBlanc said. “Even a couple of times when we tried to throw it we weren’t very effective in the second half, but fine, if people are going to start stacking the box on us, we’ll make adjustments for it and go out and do what we do.”
Dautreuil then intercepted Beard on Vinton’s next possession, returning the ball 71 yards to the Lions’ 1-yard line. Hebert scored on the next snap for a 29-14 lead with the Pickens point-after.
Vinton managed to get to within 29-20 on its next possession, thanks passes of 41 and 39 yards to Budwine, the latter for the touchdown. The 2-pointer failed.
A 29-yard run by Lemaire started the Bobcats’ next drive off nicely, and he then ran for 11 yards to set up Dautreuil’s five-yard TD run, with the Bobcats moving the pile into the end zone after Dautreuil was initially hit at the 4-yard line.
Erath turned away Vinton in part thanks to five forced turnovers, including a pair of interceptions by Ashton Alleman and a fumble recovery by Jordan Hamm. The Bobcats also forced four punts and a turnover on downs at the Erath 1, which came after an apparent fumble recovery by the Bobcats was ruled not to be a fumble.
Hebert said that the Bobcats are starting to mesh well, after having several starters miss time the past few weeks.
“You can see a lot of things coming together,” Hebert said. “We turned it on the second half, which was very good. We’re starting to get our run game a little better, which is nice. It’s going to help open up the pass.”
Seven players caught passes for Erath, led by Soirez with two catches for 20 yards and Dautreuil with 12 yards on two catches. Lemaire (33 yards), Alfred (18 yards) and Drake Domangue (10 yards) also had catches of 10 yards or greater.
Hebert, a junior, credits the senior class with inspiring the team to keep working hard.
“It’s really the senior class,” Hebert said. “They’ve worked their butts off for the last four years. My brother (Austin Hebert) was a senior last year, and it’s not really a great way to go out if you’re not going to the playoffs and trying for the state championship. All the team feels like we need to come together as a team, work together and work harder, and give these seniors their last ride out of there.”
“I’ve been saying it about all year,” LeBlanc said. “I wasn’t just blowing smoke about this team. We were 0-4 but were having some of the best practices all year out there. These guys are hungry, and they want to win. We’ve got a good group of seniors who want to lead this team the right way, and you can see it out there in practice. We’ll keep working these guys, and we’ll keep getting after it, and we’re looking forward to getting into district next week.”

Before the Vermilion Catholic /Highland Baptist game, four former Mt. Carmel football players took part in the coin flip at midfield.
Members of the 1953 and 1954 Mt Carmel teams participated in the coin flip. The 1953 football team was known as the Iron Dozen.

2023 Erath High Homecoming Court- (left to right) Abigail Zegura, Tovy Tran Averie Guidry, Caroline Lopez, Ava LeBlanc, Brylee Pogue, Gracie Griffin, Averi Granger, Ma’Ciah Mitchell, and Ella Caillouet. The Queen will be announced at the game on Friday. Presentation of the court begins at 6:15 pm.

BALDWIN - Abbeville senior inside linebacker Zaylun Williams admitted that he and the rest of the Wildcats were looking ahead to next week in preparing for Thursday night’s road trip to winless West St. Mary.
But in the end, it didn’t matter as Abbeville’s defense pitched a shutout, and the offense came around in the second half as the Wildcats won their fourth straight game of the season in a 41-0 rout of the Wolfpack as the team looks towards Friday’s road game at St. Charles Catholic.
“I’m not going to talk down about an opponent, but we weren’t worried about this team; we were looking forward to next week,” Williams said after the win in which the defense recorded six sacks, three interceptions, including a pick 6 for a touchdown and held WSM to negative yards rushing in the contest.
“We were looking ahead, but it didn’t hurt us tonight.”
While the offense struggled in the first half and only led 12-0 at the break, the defense completely shut down West St. Mary (0-5), giving the offense time to get going and start producing yards and points.
“That was just us executing the plan we had all week,” Williams said. “That was us being coached well, executing the coach’s plan for the game, and not letting them have any positive yards.
“They may have had some positive yards here and there, but when it came time to lock down, we locked down.”
Justin Montgomery had a 3-yard TD run for the game’s first score.
The second touchdown went in the air. Quarterback Tahj Judge connected with Artis Latson for a 30-yard touchdown. It was 12-0 at halftime.
The Wolfpack had more negative plays than positive ones in the game.
West St. Mary finished with negative five yards rushing and at one time was negative 30 yards rushing. WSM quarterback Tyshon Jackson was sacked six times, including, appropriately enough, the game’s last play. He was picked off three times, including a 38-yard interception return for a score in the fourth quarter from sophomore Deylon Joseph.
“Our defense held us in while we figured some things out offensively,” Abbeville (4-1) coach Roderick Moy said. “We weren’t very sound on offense, but the defense held it together until we got over the hump in the second half.
“I’m very proud of the effort defensively.”
Moy was very complimentary of Williams’ performance.
“He was our only healthy inside linebacker. We had to make up some things and do some differently,” the AHS coach said. “We lost two kids in the past two days, and Williams was the senior leader we needed him to be tonight.”
The defense needed to be stout because the Wildcats struggled on offense in the first half.
Only two drives ended in touchdowns as Montgomery scored on a three-yard run in the first quarter, and Judge threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Artis Latson in the second quarter.
But Moy didn’t hit the panic button.
“At the end of the day, we stayed true to who we are,” Moy said. “We didn’t make anything up. We hit a couple of passes at the end of the second and third quarters, and in the fourth quarter, we could play power football and still hung 41 on them.”
Abbeville scored 23 points in the second half against WSM, including a nice bit of trickeration with a double-pass that ended up in the hands of Brian Gordon to complete the 30-yard pass play for the score.
Now, the Wildcats turn their attention to St. Charles, the reigning Select Division III state champions.
“Hopefully, we are going to play the ball style next week where no one scores 41 points,” Moy said.” It’s going to be a clash of two excellent football teams in the state of Louisiana.
“Our goal is to put the state on notice that we are here and we are going to be here for a long time in November and into December.”
Abbeville finished with 240 yards rushing and 79 passing yards for a total of 319 yards.
Montgomery had 13 carries for 79 yards rushing, while Tazavian Andrews also had 13 carries for 80 yards.
Edmar Simon III had nine carries for 45 yards.
The Wildcats used two quarterbacks. DaZavien Maze completed 2 for 4 passes for 49 yards and a touchdown. Judge completed one out of two passes for 30 yards and a touchdown.
With receptions for Abbeville were Artis Latson (2 catches for 41 yards and a TD) and Brian Gordon (1 catch for 38 yards and a TD).