Pope John Paul II’s Jaguars head to Springfield to face the Bulldogs in a District 9-2A contest tonight.

PJP (4-2) captured its only district game two weeks ago, 28-6, over Pine. Springfield (2-4) is winless in two attempts in league play.

The Jaguars are coming off a 20-0-non-district loss to St. Charles Catholic, while Springfield suffered a 36-20 setback to St. Helena Central.

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The two met last year with Springfield winning, 33-10.

Bulldogs’ first year coach Ryan Serpas said PJP is pretty impressive.

“They look outstanding on defense. They fly to the ball. They’re real aggressive and you always see six-or-seven Pope jerseys making a play on the ball,” Serpas said.

The last two touchdowns gave up came off of turnovers. St. Charles Catholic had scoring drives of 63, 24 and 16 yards.

Coach Mark Jeanmard said his unit’s success has been a team effort. In last week’s game, Tyler Martin and Tyler Lusignan each recorded six tackles for the Jaguars. This season, Martin has been in on 23 stops, 13 individual. Lusignan, who intercepted his second pass last week, has 29 tackles with 19 solos. This season, senior linebacker Cory Davis leads the Jags with 37 stops and he has three sacks. Senior lineman Bobby Mayfield has tallied four sacks, tops on the team.

They will be facing an offense that has had success throwing the football. Junior Kevin Henderson is the quarterback. This season, he has thrown for 871 yards with eight touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

His receivers are Darron McKigney and Antonio Patrick. Serpas said Patrick is his deep threat. McKigney has 15 catches for 282 yards (18.8 yards per catch) with four TDs. Patrick has 14 receptions for 311 (22.1 yard average) and two scores.

The running back is sophomore Jamar Jones. Last week, Jones ran for 153 yards and one touchdown on 23 carries. This season Jones has 99 carries for 530 yards and five TDs.

Offensively, PJP runs the veer with Nathan Hewitt calling signals. He will start, but sophomore Carlo Conforto may see playing time.

Coach Jeanmard said his team needs to improve offensively.

“We have to have a better performance than we did last week,” Jeanmard said. “We have to stop turning the ball over, cut down on the penalties and be more physical at the point of attack.”

One of the positives that came from the game was running back Ross Macaluso carried the ball 23 times for 88 yards. This year, Macaluso has 111 carries for 583 yards (5.2 yards a tote) and a touchdown on a 56-yard run off a fake punt two weeks ago in a victory against Pine.

This season, the Jaguars have had seven different players score touchdowns with six from the offense and one coming from the defense.