Vanessa Venjohn is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Benjamin Franklin High School for AZPreps365.com.

Senior running back Marquise Byrd rushed for three touchdowns to lead Benjamin Franklin to a 33-6 win over Seton Catholic in its first 4A region game Friday night.

The Chargers did it all. They not only held Seton Catholic to six points, but they also produced huge plays. Noah Badger blocked a punt in the second quarter that set up a Byrd touchdown.

Byrd had over 70 rushing yards.

Senior Dayson Blair had his first varsity win as a starting quarterback. He had a 1-yard rushing touchdown to get the offense started.

“Coming into the game, to be honest, I was a little nervous,'' Blair said. "I didn’t know how it was going to turn out, first game in 4A against a bigger school than we are used to. But we definitely performed a lot better than I expected to be honest and everyone performed the best they could on the field, and it showed.”

In region 4A, the Chargers are facing a different set of opponents. Playing Seton Catholic for the first time, coach Dave Jefferies wanted the team to compete, but most importantly have fun.

“The four standards I want to establish anytime we go play a game is blocking and tackling and then teamwork and toughness,” Jefferies said. “Those are the four things that we want to do while we are on the field. And if everybody who is watching the game sees those things out of us, the score may be what it is. Obviously, winning is more fun, but if we can do those four things I’m going to leave the game pretty happy.”

Junior kicker Andrew Teuscher made a 20-yard field goal and kicked three extra points. Winning Friday might show Benjamin Franklin is ready to compete in 4A.

“It feels awesome, ya know, coming in here we are the underdogs by quite a bit, so we just showed 4A what we are about,” Teuscher said.

Said Blair: “Our strengths were definitely discipline. We are outsized (against) most of the teams we play so the team is very disciplined to beat people to the ball, beat people to blocks, run as hard as they can."

The Chargers visit Marcos de Niza in Tempe on Friday.

“It was great to be out there with our players and it was great to see them competing,” Jefferies said. “A lot of them have played back-up rolls the last couple years in our program, and so it was fun to see kids play hard that I hadn’t seen play hard yet because they haven’t been starters for us yet. We have a lot of new blood out there and they did a great job.”