No matter what the outcome had been, Friday’s season opener against Cathedral wasn’t going to be the defining point of St. Aloysius’ season.

The Flashes are just hoping some of it doesn’t become a theme.

Cathedral ran for 412 yards, built a couple of big leads, and took advantage of some general sloppiness by St. Al to score a 42-31 win. In addition to their porous run defense, the Flashes bobbled a few snaps and had an extra point blocked.

It was the type of game a lot of teams have in their season debuts, but not one a team like St. Al was probably expecting. The Flashes reached the Class 1A semifinals last season and have high expectations for this one. St. Al coach BJ Smithhart seemed hopeful it was just one game, and not a trend.

“We’ve got a game under our belt, so we hope we can improve and move forward,” Smithhart said.

It wasn’t all bad for the Flashes. They showed some fight in battling back from a 19-point deficit in the first half — and again late in the game — and exhibited some big-play capability.

Running back DeMichael Harris had touchdown runs of 60 and 45 yards, and finished the game with 137 yards and three TDs on only 12 carries. Quarterback Connor Smith ripped off an 80-yard TD run.

It wasn’t enough, though. St. Al fell behind 28-9 late in the second quarter and never could get over the hump in its comeback attempt. The long TD runs by Harris and Smith got them back to within 28-23, but Cathedral scored twice more to put the game out of reach.

St. Al got one last TD on Harris’ 45-yard run with 6 1/2 minutes left to make it 42-29, but got no closer.

The Flashes’ next challenge is Pisgah, a Class 2A team that Smithhart said is similar to Cathedral in its ability to run the football.

Pisgah lost 33-20 to Pelahatchie in its opener Friday night.

“They’ve got a bunch of athletes with speed to burn,” Smithhart said. “They like to run it to the outside, which is what we’ve got to fix. We’ve got to get better.”

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Vicksburg Post reporter Josh Edwards contributed to this story.