The St. Aloysius Flashes lost a tight game with Washington School on Friday night, but the way they held together after falling behind by two touchdowns in the second half gave them an optimistic outlook for district play.

Overall, St. Al’s players and coaches feel like they’ve built momentum throughout the first four weeks of the season, and will use that moving forward as they head into this Friday’s District 3-AAA opener at Hartfield Academy.

“We just have to build off of it,” senior wide receiver Brandon Teller said. “We’re up right now; we’re playing really good. On the scoreboard we lost, but we’re still playing really good. We need to keep that up going into next week, and I think we can control the district if we play like we did (Friday), or even better.”

St. Al coach BJ Smithhart just hopes everyone is healed and ready to play. Sophomore quarterback Antonio Thompson was injured with about 8 minutes left in the game. Teller took his place and finished the game as quarterback.

Teller was the starting quarterback headed into the season, but has been limited in that role because of a hand injury.

“The kid is playing his heart out. He’s a good ball player and we hope he’s OK,” Smithhart said of Thompson.

Defensively, the Flashes (0-4) showed some improvement after giving up 35 and 50 points, respectively, in losses to Pisgah and Madison-St. Joe. Teller, who also plays defensive back, has seen some improvements in his teammates who are learning as the season progresses.

“From the first week, we got a lot better at defending the run game. Then in our third game last week we had a hard time defending the pass and they were a passing team, but I think we got it figured out this week and were able to stop them a little bit,” Teller said.

As for offense, he said the team is still settling into their positions.

“As a team we really need to work on having a balanced defense that can cover the pass and the run equally, and then on offense we’ve just got to figure out our blocking assignments. Everybody needs to know all our routes out of the receivers. That’s very important,” Teller said.

The Flashes even had a big special teams play on Friday. Kicker Channing Curtis successfully executed an onsides kick that his teammates recovered. It led to a 3-yard touchdown run by Jamar Williams that tied the game at 13 midway through the third quarter. Teller said St. Al had been working on the play all week.

“We didn’t know when we were going to incorporate it, but that was a good time to do it and we made it happen,” Teller said. “Channing put the ball where it needed to be.”

With plays being made in all three phases of the game, Smithhart said he was pleased with the effort, if not the outcome, of Friday’s game.

“There’s no substitute for a win,” Smithhart said. “We don’t like the outcome, but I’m very proud of the way they played.”

ST. ALOYSIUS AT HARTFIELD

Friday, 7 p.m.

Radio: 101.3 FM

Online: For live scoring updates on Friday night, visit twitter.com/vixpostsports and facebook.com/thevicksburgpost