Fabian Celestine rushed for three touchdowns to lead Hahnville to victory in its Homecoming week, 36-9 over H.L. Bourgeois at Tiger Stadium.
Hahnville’s defense dominated in the first half as HHS established a 34-3 lead at halftime. The second half was played with a running clock.
Landen Teague connected with Early James for a touchdown. Landon Aymond made two field goals. Austin Sanchez recorded a sack in the endzone for a safety and Tyler Martin recovered a fumble.
Celestine accounted for the first three touchdowns of the night, the third a breakaway dash that made it 22-3 in the first half and cemented control for Hahnville, which earned the win in its District 7-5A opener.
The game was played Thursday night, moved up one day to account for weather concerns on Friday.
It was the third straight big statistical night for Celestine and the Tigers’ rushing attack – coinciding with a three-game winning streak for Hahnville (3-2, 1-0).
“It’s just trusting each other and trusting my O-line,” said Celestine of the Tigers’ offense. “And when you have that trust, great things happen. The first two weeks we started off kind of slow. We had to get out of that … we got back to doing the things we do.
“Three in a row, that’s where we want to be. Winning’s the expectation, and we want to come out and win next week as well.”
Bourgeois dropped to 0-4 with the loss, including an 0-2 district mark.
For Hahnville head football coach Greg Boyne, meanwhile, there were certainly aspects of Friday night’s win he was pleased with – the Tiger defense’s suffocating first half effort high on the list. But he was well short of being satisfied – penalties, including several on special teams, were one aspect he said the team simply has to correct before it takes on Terrebonne next week.
“I was a little hard on them (after the game),” Boyne said. “But I have high expectations for this group and I didn’t think we met them, especially offensively. I thought the defense, the starters might have given up negative yards. They played well … I saw them flying around. Just a bit frustrated. Our offensive line’s been playing well, but their two defensive ends gave us trouble. We have to be better, or it’s going to be a problem down the line.”
Boyne said Celestine’s displaying good vision and has found a groove with his linemen.
“He’s seeing everything we’re doing. For some of the plays we ran, our line was pretty effective,” Boyne said.
“I expect to be able to run the ball. There were just too many times where we got beat, though, on things we should not get beat on. That’s correctable. But there’s a lot we still need to fix.”
