NATCHEZ — One week after making a long road trip to Monroe, La., to play St. Frederick, the Cathedral Green Wave will make an even longer trip this Friday as they take on Sebastopol in their Region 4-1A opener.

“It’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive,” Cathedral coach Craig Beesley said. “It’s the third week in a row we’ve been on the road. The kids are ready to get back home next week and have a home game. But we’re kind of used to (traveling) seeing we were in a region that covered so much area last year. We’re used to long road trips.”

Cathedral has had a tough start to its season, losing its first three games.

However, none of those are region games, which is something Beesley is glad of.

“We’ve gotten off to a bad start being 0-3, but everything is new now,” Beesley said. “These are the games that matter. It’s good to allow us to try different things the first three games. We’d much rather have won those games, but we feel like we’ve gotten better and gotten to try out different formations and sets.”

The main thing Cathedral must improve as the Green Wave go into region play is their offense.

The Wave have scored just 12 total points in three games, and were shut out in their opener.

Beesley said its important for the offense to make positive yards every play to avoid getting in long-yardage situations.

“We’ve got to have positive yards on each play so we can be second and five and third and three,” Beesley said. “We don’t want to be second and 10 or third and seven. We want to be in short-yardage so we can convert on third down and keep the chains moving.”

And Beesley said that has been one of the main focuses at practice this week.

“We’re focusing on five or six plays during the game we feel we can be better at,” Beesley said. “Those are the things that have hurt us. Sometimes we’ll have a drive going and have a negative play and get in a long-yardage situation. We want to get the kids to focus on plays at crucial times during the game and make sure we do the right thing.”

And that will be a big key against Sebastopol on Friday.

The Bobcats come into the game with a 2-2 record. They won their first two games of the season over Edinburg and Lake, but lost their last two, 27-18 against Scott Central and 13-7 against Union.

“We’ll have a big challenge this week with Sebastopol and their athletic ability,” Beesley said. “They’re very athletic and have two good running backs and a quarterback that can run the ball at any time. For us to be successful, we’ll have to stop the run and create turnovers. If we get turnovers early and convert them into points, it will be big for us.”