The young Bulldogs kicked off their season by defeating host Hebbronville 21-8 on Friday.

LHS VARSITY BULLDOG FOOTBALL - Bottom row, left to right, Marcus Mendoza, Jacob Lerma, Aaron Guerra, Roli Rios, CJ Moreno, Dillion De Los Reyes, Art Vasquez, Ethan Cavazos. Second row, Martin Hernandez, Mike Hernandez, RJ Lopez, David Chavez, Dillon Ackers, Sammy Chapa, Edward Castillo, Eloy Perez. Third row, Armand Hernandez, Jacob Esparza, Eddie Delgado, Lincoln Chavez, Micah Ramos, Isaac Saldivar, Steve Salinas, Peter Adameit. Fourth row, Richard Quintanilla, Kris Garcia, Derek Correa, Christian Cervantes, Matthew Reyna, Emilio Rivera, Andrew Villarreal, Danny Espinoza. Fifth row, G. Jauregui, A. Garcia, M. Garza, J. Guerra, J. Infante, D. Ames, A. Pena, P. Garcia, E. Perez. C.J. Moreno threw touchdown passes to Edward Castillo (32 yards) and to David Chavez (29 yards). Jacob Esparza scored on a three-yard run.

"It was important for us to win, you always want to start off the season with a victory especially with a young ball club and I thought Friday's win was a great way to start the season," Head Coach Jaime Infante said. "Obviously we are happy with the win but we still have a lot of room for improvement."

Infante said he was pleased with his offense's production against Hebbronville, but not satisfied.

"We were happy with our offensive performance in a way but I think we should have scored more points than we did and we kind of kept ourselves from doing that," Infante said. "Anytime you don't punt during an entire football game I think you should score more than 21 points. We had our opportunities but I think we just did not take advantage of all of them."

The Bulldogs' defense, however, played with plenty of gusto against the Longhorns. "On defense we saw some improvement, I think we tackled better and were more aggressive than our two summer scrimmages," Infante said. "We saw improvement on both sides of the ball and right now our goal is to keep getting better leading up to our district games. As young as we are, improvement will be critical and the good thing is we saw some of that on Friday."

Lyford hosts Port Isabel at 7:30 p.m. this Friday.

"Year in and out, Port Isabel has a hard nosed offensive and defensive ball club," Infante said. "We recently saw them play against Mission Veterans and now have a pretty good idea of what they are doing this year. It's going to be a great game, both of our teams are young though I think they have a few more returning starters than we do, and the thing for us is just to improve from last week in order to beat them."

Against P.I., Lyford will have to keep their mistakes at a minimum.

"We cannot have as many miscues as we did against Hebbronville," Infante said. "Defensively, if we play as aggressive as we did last Friday night I think we will be in good shape and our kids are excited to be playing their first home game."