After a long rain delay a week ago forced the Rebels to play just a half of football against Pleasant Home, Zion Chapel and their players were hungry to officially kick off the 2015 season Friday night in Dothan against Providence Christian.

It didn’t go well from the start for the Rebels and they fell to 0-1 on the season after falling 44-0 to Eagles.

“It was an old fashioned tail whipping tonight,” said Rebels head coach Bradley Bowers. “I mean I don’t think we had two first downs the entire night. They were more physical and faster than we were. It was one of those things that if it could go wrong, it did.”

Bowers knows his team was a bit younger than the hosting Eagles and believes that they may have prepared the wrong way heading into the match up.

“We are a younger football team but more so, I didn’t do a good enough job of getting them ready to play,” Bowers said. “I just have to come back and make a better game plan heading into next week. The coaches and myself just need to do a better job at getting our kids ready to play.”

Although the Rebels had only two quarters of competitive football under the belts heading into Friday night, the Eagles from Providence Christian came in to Friday’s game in the same situation.

“They looked way more polished than we did. They had 10 returning starters on defense. We have five or six so you wouldn’t think it would make that big of a difference,” Bowers said. “They really put one on us tonight.”

The game didn’t go as plan for the Rebels on Friday night, but Bowers plans to express to his players that a lot of times things are never as good or bad as they seem and the biggest thing they need to get better at is competing and playing hard.

The Rebels will start their road to improving this week in advance of their week two matchup at Elba.

“On Monday we will probably watch a half of film and when we get done with it we will go out to practice and try to fix things but after that its over,” Bowers said. “We are looking ahead. We are moving ahead and not sulking. We are going to get ready to play.”