Northlake Christian School senior Zak Smith delivered a hat trick before the home crowd Saturday to help spark the Wolverines to a 4-0 bi-district round win over the Redemptorist Wolves from Baton Rouge on a cool, blustery winter day on a soggy field. NCS, the No. 8 seed, advances to the regional round and will host the St. Frederick Warriors, the No. 9 seed, out of Monroe.

Thursday’s regional round contest is scheduled for 6:30 at Lakeshore High School. The home game for the Wolverines has been moved to the turf field at Lakeshore due to the field conditions at NCS.

St. Frederick (15-6-1) defeated Rapides 7-1 in the bi-district round to advance. St. Frederick junior Logan Blackford netted a hat trick to lead the Warriors to victory. Blackford has 22 goals on the season.

NCS senior Zak Smith (3) battles Redemptorist’s Jake Browning (15) for possession during Saturday’s bi-district round playoff game played at NCS. The Wolverines’ Zander St. Pierre (17) and Redemptorist’s Devin Croney (6) support the play. (Staff Photo by Mike Pervel)

NCS, who finished the regular season as the co-district champions tied with St. Thomas Aquinas, moved to 11-10-3 on the season. Redemptorist, the No. 25 seed, ended its season at 6-8-1 after finishing third in their district.

The Wolverines were the aggressor from the outset managing to control the offensive flow despite the sloppy field conditions.

Smith and senior Blake Staley pressured the Redemptorist defense early in the match to set the tone. Smith put the Wolverines up 1-0 assisted by eighth grader Weston Acosta. Smith pushed the lead to 2-0 tallying off an assist from junior Chad Broussard, which is how the first half ended.

Just after intermission, Smith struck again to bring the tally to 3-0 as he and Broussard teamed up again to put keep NCS in control.

NCS tallied its final goal delivered by Blake Staley from 10 yards out 25 minutes into the second half. Zander St. Pierre was credited with the assist.

The field was still quite wet from Thursday’s downpours and the overcast skies made for little warmth to help dry the field prior to Saturday’s match.

NCS coach Nick Chetta was proud of his team’s effort.

“We played fairly well with the field conditions the way they were. We started slowly but came on stronger as the game progressed,” Chetta said.

Chetta said praised the play of his team and his goalkeeper.

“Our guys played hard and our goalie sophomore Jeffrey George did a great job defending the net,” Chetta said.

Tempers flared a bit in the second half with a player from each team receiving a red card and were ejected from the contest forcing both clubs to finish with just 10 players.

“We both had to deal with an unpleasant situation so we also had 10 guys for something that will not occur again, I can assure you,” Chetta added.

Redemptorist coach Robert Hebert said his club couldn’t get any offensive flow in the second half.

“In the beginning we had opportunities keeping the ball in play on their end of the field but in the second half having to play with 10 guys hurt us,” Hebert said.