NATCHEZ — Fear of the unknown isn’t enough to stop the Adams County Christian Rebels as they begin their season Friday.

The Rebels will face off against the CENLA Christian Academy Lions, a team it’s not too familiar with.

“They’re kind of an unknown, that’s the problem,” Rebels head coach Paul Hayles said.

“They scrimmaged a team out of Baton Rouge, (the Christian Home Educators Foundation), and they had good results with their offensive execution, so we just have to find out a way to slow down their offensive sets.”

Rebels senior Dylan Johnson said the main focus on Friday will be stopping the Lions’ key players.

“All we know is they have four playmakers at wide receiver and running back, supposedly,” Johnson said.

Junior Brandon Sanders said he’s more worried about what his team will have to do than what the Lions might bring against them.

“We’ve got to execute,” Sanders said. “If we don’t do that, then they’re going to run it down our throat.”

The Rebels are coming off a showing in the Copiah Jamboree last Thursday, in which they split two one-quarter games against Hillcrest Christian and East Rankin. They defeated Hillcrest Christian 6-0 but lost to East Rankin 7-6.

Hayles said he was able to take some things from the jamboree performances to work on this week in practice.

“Both scrimmages were close,” Hayles said. “We’ve been working on execution on the offensive line, and the offense across the board really.

“Defensively, we made a lot of miscues. On some defensive calls we went the wrong way and created some gaps, and East Rankin made us pay for it, and Hillcrest made some plays against us too.”

Spencer said he felt the scrimmage was an important part of the preparation for the regular season.

“It was a building point to our season,” Spencer said. “We made some mistakes and we’re learning from them.”

Rebels senior Bryce Murray said he was encouraged by last Thursday’s showing.

“We did a whole lot better than we did last year,” Murray said. “We’ve improved a lot.”

Hayles said the offenses run by Hillcrest Christian and East Rankin should help prepare them for the offenses run by teams on the first half of the Rebels’ schedule this year.

“It does seem that the teams on the first half of our schedule all run similar spread offenses,” Hayles said. “We keep facing that, and hopefully we’ll get a rhythm against it.”

Despite the preparation his team got from the scrimmages, Hayles said he has mixed feelings about competing in them before the regular-season games start.

“When I was at (Wilkinson County Christian), we lost our starting nose guard and starting center in one jamboree, so that crippled us for a good portion of the year,” Hayles said.

“We’ve been lucky (so far). We’re relatively healthy. We have a couple of bumps and bruises, but nothing major, and Lord-willing, it’ll stay that way.”