By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
(NOTE – As the New Year approaches, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal staff is looking back at some of our favorite content from 2025. Here’s a game story from a Sept. 28 showdown that set the tone for the District 1-5A football race.)
Close games turn on a handful of plays. Friday night’s battle between District 1-5A stalwarts Airline and Evangel turned on a bucketful.
And it lived up to billing, down to the last snap. For the first time in 14 district games, Airline wound up disappointed, but the Vikings lingered on the field at Evangel’s Rodney Duron Stadium for quite a while after the Eagles’ 51-49 victory.
Maybe it was because they realized it was going to take a while for the traffic to crawl out of the front gates of the ECA campus and their buses were going nowhere fast.
But that was a convenient consequence. Airline (3-1, 1-1 in 1-5A) and Evangel (3-1, 3-0) players chopped it up, not so much because there was nowhere to go fast, but they were in the afterglow of a big game that fit every syllable of the pregame hype.
Mutual admiration. Each coach marveled at the opposing offense – and bragged about his defense.
“I felt like we did a really good job at times, that’s the crazy thing,” said Airline’s Justin Scogin, “and they still scored 51.”
“What he did out there offensively tonight was masterful,” said Evangel’s Denny Duron about Scogin’s play calling. “He was floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee. We had quite a battle. Airline, they’re for real. They can score points on anybody.”
Duron was deservedly delighted in the aftermath.
“This isn’t the Super Bowl, and I’m talking like it is,” he said, “but this is a pretty big game for us.”
After a 5-5 regular season in their return to 1-5A last year, the Eagles had better things in mind. Expectations were higher inside and outside the program. So were the stakes Friday night – maybe not a must win, but no doubt, a statement win for the survivor.
“This doesn’t define us, but it hurts,” said Scogin. “I hope they understand we’re a really good team, and we gotta bounce back.”
Bounce back is what each team did again, and again, and again.
Take Evangel’s passing fancy, Peyton “Pop” Houston. The junior quarterback, who two weeks ago pledged to sign with LSU in the 2027 recruiting class, was intercepted only six times last year in 443 attempts.
He was victimized three times Friday night, one for a first-quarter 19-yard pick six by Airline’s Braylyn Jackson that helped Airline to a 28-14 halftime advantage.
“When you throw three picks in a game, you feel like you’ve hurt the team, but knowing you’re the quarterback, you’ve got to be the leader … find a way to keep the morale up,” he said, “and we did a great job of fighting back.”
Houston’s resiliency, tested like never before in only his second season of high school football, was added to his resume’ Friday. He finished 17 of 25 for 427 yards and three touchdowns, including third-quarter strikes of 69 yards (to Demarkus Evans) and 52 yards (to Johnny Casey Jr.) on successive plays early after halftime.
Take his teammate, linebacker and battering-ram running back Damari “Dae-Dae” Drake. Felled in the first half by what turned out to be a neck stinger (“I almost thought I was dead,” he said afterward), and pulled from the game in the third quarter after an usportsmanlike conduct penalty (“I knew I just needed to not be childish and not act out again … God gave me the chance to redeem myself”) Drake dominated the closing minutes both ways.
He rammed through five Vikings to blast in from the 1 for the decisive TD with 3:40 to go, and his power running helped Evangel evaporate the final 2:23 after Airline closed within two points.
“He just determined we were not going to lose, and took things into his own hands,” said Duron. “He took the game over, ran it down their throats. A lot of it was blocking, but he did a whole bunch on his own. He’s a warrior.”
The game pivoted over and over and over early in the fourth quarter.
Evangel almost tied it at 35 with 11:24 left, but for a missed extra point slightly dimming a series including an astonishing scramble by Houston to evade a big loss that instead was a 7-yard completion. (“No way!” Airline’s standout linebacker, Keadre Garner, exclaimed to the Eagles’ QB as the chase ended.)
Airline’s Kenny Darby promptly housed the kickoff, finding a lane up the left hash and going 97 yards for a 42-34 advantage.
Said Duron of Darby: “Not only does he live up to billing, but I’ve rarely seen anybody like him on a high school field. That’s as big a talent as there is in the country.”
Four snaps later came Houston’s last interception, a nifty swipe by Jaylan Bradley that set up Airline at the ECA 45.
The Vikings quickly gained first-and-goal, and from the 4, Darby (who shared the feature back role with D.J. Allen, along with his usual 5-star receiver duties) knifed over left tackle to the brink of a clinching TD – until the plot twist of the night.
“He was going into the end zone and probably would have sealed it,” Duron said, “but Nick Lopez timed it and punched it out. A couple of bounces and it went right into the hands of a guy who can really run.”
That was receiver and cornerback Jayden Hicks.
“I didn’t see it come out. I just saw it on the ground, picked it up and took off running,” he said, “I was looking at it on the (videoboard) screen and knew I was going all the way.”
That 99-yarder gave Evangel a chance to tie. Houston dropped back, tucked it, and weaved in for a two-point conversion that knotted it at 42-all with 7:26 left.
The Eagles’ defense, at a fever pitch, got the game’s only three-and-out, helped by a third down botched snap and a 17-yard loss back to the Airline 6. The deep snap for Airline’s only punt attempt was more costly – it sailed over the back of the end zone for a safety and a 44-42 ECA edge.
A late hit flag at the end of the return of the free kick got the Eagles to the Vikings’ 28. Three rugged runs by Drake got them a two-possession 51-42 advantage. Naturally, Airline traveled 80 yards in just over a minute behind Darby and Allen, and quarterback Chase Williams, who looped a perfect 15-yard score to Allen that trimmed the deficit down to two points.
Evangel smothered the onside kick, then picked up a 12-yard sweep by Houston before Drake discarded defenders right and left on a 36-yard jaunt to first and goal.
Just when the Eagles seemed to have iced it, they provided one more unintended thrill. Trying to score, an ECA back lost the ball just shy of the goalline and it squirted a few feet sideways, For a moment, Airline players had a shot to recover, but failed. The last half-minute faded away.
But the memories will not, on either side.
“This is definitely the most satisfying game I’ve played. It’s always fun playing Airline. I know a lot of those guys,” said Houston. “The fans came ready. We came ready. Airline came ready. It was a great game of football.”
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com