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HC's Psyche Job on Blue Jays Fails

By BRYAN LAZARE

The oldest high school football rivalry in Louisiana resumed Saturday night at Tad Gormley Stadium, but with a new twist.

For 57 years Jesuit and Holy Cross have been doing battle on the gridiron.  So, winless Holy Cross took a page out of Notre Dame's book against once-beaten Jesuit in the District 11-AAAA contest.

The Tigers, following pre-game warm-ups, donned green jerseys.  But the results were not any different as expected as Jesuit methodically whipped Holy Cross, 36-0.

The psychological game had little effect on the Blue Jays.  Jesuit scored the first two times it had the ball and went on from there to a 29-0 halftime lead.

Jesuit coach Billy Murphy was in doubt as to how his team would react after three tough games.  "I didn't know the frame of mind the team was in.  but the team responded well.

"I felt like they couldn't beat us unless we just gave the game away to them.  We couldn't let down.  We got three more games to play and each one is the big one,"  said Murphy, referring to his team's sharing the Catholic League lead with three teams with three weeks left in the season.

The tempo of the contest was set early when Greg Eckholdt intercepted a pass - the first of four Jesuit thefts - at the Jesuit 28.  Eckholdt, who intercepted another pass on the final play of the game, returned the ball to the Blue Jay 45.  Jesuit went 55 yards in nine plays for the first of five touchdowns.

Dyrus Charles and Lenny Quick, who keyed the Jesuit ground attack for the game with 73 and 71 yards respectively, did the damage on that drive.  Quick scored from three yards out.

Timmy Parenton threw eight passes in his appearance and two of the tosses were completed for touchdowns.  Jesuit's next two TD's came on Parenton throws of nine yards to Bobby Lewis and 58 yards to Lon McCloskey.  But this Jesuit team is relying mostly on its ground game in its offensive success.

"We are running the ball more this year because we can get outside," said Murphy, "Last year we had problems doing this.  We can throw, but we are having success running first."

Jesuit rolled up 261 yards against Holy Cross.  Besides Charles and Quick, Lenny Cassioppi contributed 66 yards - mostly on the outside - and McCloskey added 58.  Jesuit's final two six-pointers came on runs, a one-yarder by reserve quarterback John Faciane and a 1-yarder by Quick.

Jesuit moved into a share of the league lead with Chalmette, Rummel and St. Augustine - all with 3-1 district records.  Holy Cross is 0-4 in the league and 0-7 on the year.

Editor: The game statistics were omitted by the newspaper account.

Editor: We were there.  On the final play Greg Eckholdt intercepted and ran it back all the way about 80 yards, but a clipping penalty nullified the long runback and the game ended.  All in all, it was one of the really great Jesuit seasons of all time.  Only mighty St. Augustine was able to defeat the Jays in '78.

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