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Another week, another home game for the Lafayette Christian football team and another dominant showing by the defense in a  38-7 win over Horizon Christian.

“I have been impressed with the team so far,” LCS coach Jarred Pike said. “By the second half we could just run our stuff and get some younger guys in the game.”

The Cougar defense has had no troubles with the transition from 8-man to 9-man football so far. The defense allowed just seven points last week (seven of Notre Dame’s 14 points came off an interception returned for a touchdown) and seven points again this week. 

“The defense is flying right now, it’s a group effort, it really is,” Pike said. “We got our D-line working. Everyone’s chasing down, everyone’s getting in on tackles. I think last week we had four guys and like, eight tackles. This week is about the same thing. We got four or five guys that got eight or 10 tackles. So it’s just a real team effort, real complete defense.”

The two teams traded blows in the early goings of the game. The Cougars broke the deadlock with 2:36 to go in the first quarter when senior quarterback David Karvelas scored on a 4-yard touchdown run. The Warriors responded, taking a 7-6 lead early in the second quarter after a fumble by the Lafayette Christian offense set up the Warriors in the red zone.

“I know we don’t have a bunch of seniors, but we’ve got a pretty mature team. They’ve played a lot of games, and they’ve been in a lot of situations. They’ve been down before, so, you know, there wasn’t, like, a huge thing of panic,” Pike said. “It was just hey, settle down. We’re all right. Let’s, let’s get our snaps a little better here and get things rolling.”

That was as good as it would get for the traveling fans who made the journey to LaGrange. The Cougars would retake the lead with 4:25 to go in the first half when Karvelas hit Johnathan Ross for a 12-yard touchdown strike. 

The defense would come away with a massive, momentum-building play when Caleb Hinton intercepted the ball and returned it inside the Warriors’ 10-yard line. Karvelas hit Ross as time expired in the first half for a 17-yard touchdown that put LCS up 20-7 walking to the locker rooms at halftime.

“When our defense is only letting up seven points a game and the offense is putting up points we are going to be a tough team for anybody to beat,” Pike said.

The Cougars showed no mercy coming out on the other side of halftime. Karvelas connected with Noah Childree on a 65-yard touchdown with less than 30 seconds off the clock in the third quarter.

“We were just trying to rip their heart out at that point. We were like, Let’s finish this thing, you know. So we came out half, and they’ve been blitzing us all night. So we threw a screen first play out the half. Noah Childree caught it and in a one-on-one with the corner, just ran him over. I mean he didn’t even try to juke him, he just ran him over. Then he ran another 40 yards and scored,” Pike said.

After making a big defensive play earlier in the game, Hinton scored on a 62-yard run late in the third quarter. 

“This is his first year playing and he is a great kid. He’s really quick and he had a good run for us tonight,” Pike said. “We try to get our backs to run downhill, butut this kid we like, all right, maybe you can stretch it out a little bit. So, yeah, he’s, he played great, and he’s just a real athletic kid and he played well on both sides of the ball.

Lafayette Christian was not done there. Liam Carroll got a big interaction return that set up a 5-yard touchdown run from freshman Wyatt Jeffcoat in the early stages of the fourth quarter.

The win moves Lafayette Christian to 2-0 on the young season. The Cougars will host Fideles in their third of four straight home games to start the season.