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St. James had a chance to do something few other teams in the past have been able to accomplish.

That is, beat Curtis for the Class 2A championship, let alone defeat the Patriots twice in one season.

Friday, in the Louisiana Superdome, the Wildcats fell short.

Curtis reigns supreme again, winning its fourth state title in a row and 22nd overall by avenging an October loss to St. James with a 28-13 win.

At least St. James (12-3) doesn’t have to worry about being sent to the slaughterhouse.

“Regardless of the circumstance, you go and compete,” St. James head coach Rick Gaille said when asked about when Curtis will sit in the loser’s seat. “That’s why we’re not in ancient Rome, where they kill the loser. You learn life lessons from this.”

Curtis (12-2) held St. James to 159 total yards, including minus-2 passing, and racked up 330 yards of its own.

But in a sloppy game that featured a combined seven fumbles and 10 penalties, it was a 13-play, 71-yard Curtis drive that made the difference in the game.

Curtis’ Alex Lauricella returned an interception 47 yards for a touchdown that gave Curtis a 21-7 lead midway through the third quarter, and it appeared the game was over.

“Instantly I read play-action fake and I knew the route, I knew the play from practice,” Lauricella said. “I knew exactly what he was going. I just ran to the corner. I caught it and I looked at the end zone and ran.”

But the Wildcats answered when Luther Ambrose went 63 yards around right end, distancing himself from anyone with a red jersey on to cut Curtis’ lead to 21-13. Juarelle Narcisse’s extra point hit the left upright.

Curtis, though, came back, coming up with the drive that head coach J.T. Curtis called the key moment of the game.

Running the ball 12 times for 60 of the drive’s 71 yards, Curtis ate valuable time off the clock and scored when quarterback Matt Saucier plunged in from the 1.

“That’s what we worked in practice to be able to be, to be as physical, as fast, as quick as they were,” J.T. Curtis said. “This was an exceptional St. James team athletically and speed-wise, and we felt like if we were going to compete, we had to do that.”

What that was was Curtis deciding that, following the Patriots’ 16-14 loss at the end of October to St. James, the team was going to be physical in practice and just about everything else it did.

“We felt like after the game in the ninth playing date that we were not as physical as we needed to be, and we needed to really get back to some basics and made a commitment to do that,” J.T. Curtis said.

It showed Friday, as Curtis owned the line of scrimmage, and took the game to St. James.

“Tonight they simply were a better football team,” Gaille said. “For us to be successful tonight, we needed offensive efficiency and to be able to maintain some control of the football and they never allowed us to do that.”

But Friday’s win was unlike anything Curtis has been through in the past. For one thing, the emotions of the win might have been more than any other Curtis championship in the past two decades.

Besides losing twice this season – and irregularity in Curtis’ history – the school went through a very public loss when a classmate committed suicide on campus. That happened the week of the first playoff game.

“No question what we went through in the first week of the playoffs really tested us as a team, and our parents and our whole school,” J.T. Curtis said.

“This has been a season – I’ve been at Curtis my whole life – I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Lauricella, a senior defensive back. “We’ve been through so much.”

Early on, it appeared as if no one wanted to win. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was the newness of playing in the Superdome.

Whatever it was, it was ugly. The first five possessions of the game ended in fumbles recovered by the other team.

It wasn’t until St. James’ final possession of the first quarter that any team held onto the ball. And it paid off as the Wildcats moved 54 yards in 13 plays to take a 7-0 lead on Narcisse’s 1-yard touchdown.

Curtis responded when Blaine LeBlanc tied the game with a 16-yard run. After the Patriots held St. James on the ensuing possession, Curtis took a 14-7 lead when Saucier connected with Vincent Allen on a 30-yard touchdown pass fewer than two minutes before halftime.