FERRIDAY — Just because Ferriday is playing a non-district opponent Friday does not mean the Trojans will take the game lightly.

Quite the opposite, said coach Freddie Harrison about Friday’s game against 4A Beau Chene.

This game, he said, is just as important in getting to playoffs as a game in District 2-2A.

“Everything’s based off power points, so we need to go ahead and play and try to get a win,” Harrison said. “They take 32 teams into the playoffs, and we need to be in one of those top 32.”

In the LHSAA, the only teams guaranteed a playoff spot are the 10 district champions.

With two losses in District 2, Ferriday won’t get that classification.

Instead, the Trojans have to work as hard as possible to beat the next three teams, starting with Beau Chene.

“Going in as district champs would’ve been nice with a guaranteed spot,” Harrison said. “But now it’s time to be the spoiler. We don’t want anyone to come in here and think they can just push us around.”

The Trojans are hoping to turn things around from a two-game losing streak.

They fell to Sterlington, 25-6, this past Friday, failing on all but one attempt to score.

“We got into the red zone six times, but we only scored one out of six times. That’s not a good percentage,” Harrison said. “We turned the ball over on downs five times — once on the 5-yard line, once on the 6, again on the 3.”

That is the main focus of practice this week for the Trojans, although Harrison said that game-time situation is a hard one to teach.

“We get in the red zone all day, we just can’t finish,” he said. “Every play is a play you can break. Once you get loose you got to smell the end zone. It’s nothing more than willpower and want-to.

“There’s nothing I can do to teach them. It’s something they have got to figure out how to do themselves.”

But Harrison was proud of the way his young team played in general, holding Sterlington to 6 points for nearly all the first half before a bad punt snap led to another score.

He said there were a few defensive miscues that have been fixed in practice this week in preparation for a balanced attack from the Gators.

“We just have to control the football and play like we’ve been playing for the last couple weeks,” Harrison said. “We’ve been running the football real well. We just need to step up and score the football.”