NATCHEZ &045; When Lance Reed and his staff took over the struggling program at Natchez High, everyone knew they couldn’t do it without one characteristic.

Patience, and lots of it.

And that’s why Reed or members of his staff did not resort to blowing his top or finding a scapegoat when things went from bad to worse to absolutely awful in Friday night’s 63-6 loss to Warren Central.

Seven turnovers, two interceptions returned for touchdowns within a minute, two blocked punts and several bad snaps out of the shotgun would have been plenty to push everyone over the edge.

Reed could have caved by either going ballistic or throwing it in the tank. But he opted for neither.

&uot;We’re here for the long haul,&uot; said Reed, whose team has given up more than 50 points in each of the last three games.

&uot;We’re committed to get the program in the right direction, and the kids are working their tails off to improve. I’m proud of the effort they displayed.

&uot;Every game is an opportunity for us to get better. The score doesn’t matter. Regardless of the score in the fourth quarter, if we can run a good play, that’s a victory for our program. We’re not quitters.&uot;

It could have been an easy thing to do, particularly how things got so bad so quickly on a night where the Vikings had tons of things going right for them. The Vikings brought pressure on the Bulldogs’ passing game, took advantage of five interceptions and two fumble recoveries and moved the ball on the ground.

The Vikings came up with an interception on the game’s first play when Victor Hunter snagged a Jason Bruce pass. Three plays later Jesse Peddyfoot scored on a 1-yard run for just over one minute into the game.

But as soon as the game was over &045; maybe before that &045; the Vikings put their focus on Forest Hill next week in the start of region play.

&uot;We had one boy hurt, and I’m glad nobody got hurt bad,&uot; WC head coach Curtis Brewer said. &uot;We’ve got a lot of work to do for next week. Our main attention is getting ready for district. We’ve still got a lot of things we’ve got to do. We talked all week we weren’t as concerned about Natchez or anybody we play &045; we were just worried about how we play.&uot;

The Vikings played well on both sides of the ball, although 12 penalties for 100 yards was sure to get under the skin of the first-year WC head coach. Still the Vikings were able to keep the Bulldogs from establishing any rhythm on offense by putting pressure on the quarterback.

Natchez High quarterbacks Bruce and Riley Trask were thrown for a loss five times, and two bad shotgun snaps late in the game resulted in a net loss of 41 yards to put the Bulldogs’ team rushing total at 76 yards on 36 carries.

&uot;The key thing was trying to contain their best man on the field, and we felt it was the quarterback,&uot; Brewer said. &uot;We felt we had to contain him and hold him in the middle of the field, and they did a good job of it.&uot;

The Bulldogs put together their best drive of the game in the second quarter thanks to two 15-yards penalties on the Vikings. The drive started with one of them to start Natchez at its own 45, and the Bulldogs the other to get to the WC 23.

From there Bruce hit DeKeedrian Jackson on an 11-yard pass to get to the 9, and Bruce ended it four plays later when he ran it in from 5 yards out for the score to cut it to 28-6 with 2:47 left.

&uot;We’re not making excuses, but the reality of the fact is we have to get better at the things we’re doing,&uot; Reed said. &uot;That’s what we’re doing every week &045; improving. We’re improving in some areas and fell back in some areas. They got some penetration in some areas, and it kind of disrupted some of the things we intended to do. We moved the ball in spurts.&uot;