2020 36 Blitz: Lexington Christian Academy Eagles

LEXINGTON, Ky (WTVQ) – Last season, the LCA Eagles lost their first football game in August.  They wouldn’t lose again until November.  Those two losses were to teams who would both eventually become state champions. Now in 2020, they look to continue that success, but will it be in dramatic fashion like last season?

“One of the best games I’ve ever played in to be honest. Catholic was crazy, especially there at the end of course,” said senior Mattie Lebryk. “We had like the biggest fan base I’d ever played in front of. All my friends and students in there. It’s memories that you will never forget. And so it really just drives you to want to be in those situations again.”

In arguably LCA’s two biggest games of the regular season last year they were in battles. The first a 43-42 instant classic win over rival Lexington Catolich and the other a 35-34 win over district foe Somerset. The one thing these two games have in common? A decision by head coach Doug Charles to go for two late in the game.

“You know the Catholic game the momentum had changed,” said LCA Head Coach Doug Charles. “We had a lot of young players and they had played so hard and dominated the first half and the second half Catholic as we expected would come back, but I really wanted it to be on my shoulders, frankly. I told our coaches when we were at midfield. I said, when we score we’re going for two. Get our best two call.”

Ten wins and a season like that, that’s a tough act to follow and it’s going to be even tougher for Coach Doug and his Eagles. They have to replace three absolute studs from last year’s team. Quarterback Jayden Barnhardt, one of the best receivers in the state DeAirious Smith and their second-leading tackler Drew Long.

“All three of those are next level players and are going on to represent our school, but you know we were young last year,” said Charles. “We only had 6 seniors last year, but we return 17 starters.”

And what’s the number one job for those returners?

“We all step up. We have a lot of youth. We have a lot of talent,” says junior running back Xavier Brown. “Everybody just needs to step up and fill the void.”

One void will be at quarterback and now the Eagles have a former Cat on staff to help make that decision.

“Well we were certainly blessed to have Morgan Newton join our staff to be our quarterbacks coach,” says Coach Charles. “I had kinda taken the quarterbacks over the years and I’m not a quarterbacks coach by default, but he’ll do a much better job than I did for sure. And we’ve got three young guys. All three of them are juniors that are vying for that position.”

Whoever wins that job will likely want to end something plaguing the eagles the last couple of seasons…beating the Briar Jumper in the post season.

“Past two years they’ve gotten us in the regional championship or close to the regional finals,” said Brown. “So it pushes us to get there and do the things we need to do because we really want that state championship.”

Senior Mattie Lebryk knows what it’s going to take to get over that hump.

“We gotta work every single day to get better to get back to that spot. We can’t be doing the same because it didn’t work our last year so we gotta work a little harder to get past that point.”