FERRIDAY — With last week’s 34-8 loss to Trinity Episcopal behind them, Huntington can now focus on getting back on track with the first of seven straight MPSA District 6-A games ahead of them.

The road to the playoffs starts Friday at 7 p.m. when they hit the road to St. Joseph, La., to take on the Tensas Academy Chiefs. Huntington has one district win — a 38-0 win over WCCA two weeks ago.

But this won’t be as easy of a game for the Hounds as some may have thought before the season began — when they were ranked No. 2 in Class A. But now at 1-2 overall, they dropped out of that poll.

“Everybody needs to come out and do a better job,” Huntington head coach Chad Harkins said. “This is a big district game. If we’re going to make the playoffs, we definitely need a big performance from these guys.”

The Chiefs have turned their season around immediately after a 45-8 loss to Trinity in Week 1. They have since defeated District 6-A opponents Franklin Academy and Tallulah Academy by a combined score of 86-27.

“They go with Jim Lentz. He runs the ball hard and he’ll be tough for us to tackle,” Harkins said. “They threw the ball well against Franklin and Tallulah.”

Lentz ran for over 100 yards and had three rushing touchdowns in a 44-14 drubbing of Tallulah last week. He also caught a 54-yard touchdown pass from senior quarterback Bennett Schauf.

“I hope we can still play run defense,” Harkins said. “We’ve still got to work on our pass coverage and improve on that.”

Huntington’s offense had its share of problems in the loss to Trinity. The Hounds had 101 yards of total offense, all on the ground, and turned the ball over four times. Harkins said that the passing game needs to get better and his team has got to cut down on the turnovers for his team to have success.

Harkins noted that turnovers were a key factor in the Hounds’ losses to Central Private and Trinity, both Class AA teams.

“We’d love to have some improvement (in the passing game),” Harkins said. “We’ve got some young guys there. We need to throw the ball more in these district games. We didn’t run the ball well against Trinity. Hopefully we’ll be able to have some more success against (Tensas).”