Central High School’s young varsity football team opened its season with a competitive showing against visiting Altavista High School, but miscues contributed to 37-28 home loss.

“We made some mistakes,” Chargers Head Coach Will Thomas said. “The kids played hard. There’s no quit in them. The effort was there. We’ve just got to clean up some mistakes, work on our execution a little bit. We didn’t do some things correctly that we need to make sure we get corrected.”

One of the mistakes came near the end of the first half when Central held a 13-12 lead. The Chargers elected to punt the ball but snapped it over the punter’s head. The Colonels recovered the ball on the Central four-yard line and scored to go into halftime suddenly up 18-13.

“Those things happen,” Thomas said of the bad snap. “We should have overcame that. And throwing the interception there in the third quarter when we were moving the ball pretty good — we can’t make that throw. It’s just a bad throw. It’s too late. That killed some momentum because I think we’re in the game at that point.”

Junior running back Dontae Crowder led the Chargers on the ground with 25 carries for 146 yards and a touchdown. Sophomore running back T’zion Wilkerson also topped the 100-yard mark, gaining 114 yards and one score on 19 carries.

Central junior quarterback Jackson Dalton ran for two scores.

On defense for the Chargers, sophomore defensive end Khalil Wood recorded 12 tackles, senior defensive back Khamell Roberts had nine tackles and senior defensive lineman Jackson Parsons registered eight tackles, including three tackles for a loss.

This Friday at 7 p.m., the Chargers (0-1) will travel to face William Campbell High School (1-0), which is fresh off of a 61-14 road victory over Randolph-Henry High School.

“They’ve got a quarterback that can put it on the money,” Thomas said of the Generals. “He can run too. They’ve got a running back that’s good, four or five receivers.”