VINTON — The long wait is finally over for the DeQuincy Tigers as they hoisted a district championship trophy for the first time in 24 years Friday night at B.S. Walker Stadium.

The Tigers (9-1, 3-0) beat long-time rival Vinton (6-4, 2-1) 27-16 to win the District 4-2A championship.

DeQuincy won its first district championship since 2000 and its seventh consecutive game over the Lions.

The win capped a big turnaround for the Tigers. They finished the regular season 9-1 after back-to-back 2-8 seasons.

“It’s awesome,” DeQuincy head coach Tate Woodard said. “The community, you see they’re out here.

“The kids work extremely hard to get to this point.

“This is one of our goals that we set out for, and to see our kids achieve that goal, there’s nothing like it in the world. I love seeing the joy and just the passion that’s brought back to the program. It’s a great time.”

DeQuincy will likely enter the postseason as a top-five seed in Non-select Division IV.

“We’re two points away from being perfect,” Woodard said. “It’s been a good year.

“We’re not done yet. We’ll wait and see where the playoffs lie, and we’ll just keep going as long as we can.”

The playoff brackets were supposed to be released on Sunday but a lawsuit filed by University High against the Louisiana High School Athletic Association will postpone the release until it is resolved. University was forced to forfeit seven games earlier in the week after a player was deemed ineligible.

DeQuincy uncharacteristically lost three fumbles, their first of the season, but scored twice in the second half to push its lead to 27-8 in the fourth quarter on a four-yard run by Lindsey Joyce.

DeQuincy senior running back Wyatt LaVergne ran for 216 yards on 28 carries and had some bruising runs to open the second half and help the Tigers pull away after leading 13-8 at halftime. He broke free from several tackles for 33 and 29 yards on back-to-back plays before scoring on a 3-yard run with 10:43 left in the third quarter.

Vinton was looking to end its own district championship drought. They shared a district title with Kidner in 2006 and last won one outright in 2003. Down 13-8, Braylon Beard recovered a fumble with 1:48 left in the first half. But the Lions were stopped in the red zone at the Tiger 15-yard line. In all, DeQuincy came up with three red zone stops in the first half.

“It was a great job by the defense, and we turned the ball over very uncharacteristically of us,” Woodard said. ”We haven’t laid the ball on the ground one time this year to the night.

“They do a great job. They had a great game plan tonight. They’re going to play a while, too, in the playoffs. They had six wins for a reason, playing for their seventh in addition to the (district) title. So that team over there, they battled us. We battled back. It was a great game. That’s the DeQuincy-Vinton you can throw out the records in, and it’s a great game every year.”

Jaidon Briggs led Vinton with 171 rushing yards, including a 27-yard touchdown in the second quarter that dropped DeQuincy’s lead to five points.