As a capper to their inaugural season of varsity football, the Unity Christian football team got the chance to gain some valuable playoff experience Friday night.

The only problem was, the Lions were facing a team that already had plenty of it.

Unity Christian, which made the playoffs as a No. 4 seed, was matched up against the top-seeded NCC Crusaders, and the Lions suffered a 48-0 season-ending loss in McDonough.

Tyler Rhodes had three catches for 101 yards, but that accounted for virtually all of the offense for the Lions, who finished the year at 3-7.

Video highlights of the game can be found at www.prepcentralonline.com.

“We knew coming into the game that we were facing a very good football team tonight,” said Unity coach Joe Curtiss. “They are probably the best team we’ve played all year, and it was a tough night for us.”

Still, the defeat did nothing to take the shine off a season that had plenty of highlights for the first-year program.

“This isn’t the way we wanted to go out, but this doesn’t take anything away from what our kids did this year,” Curtiss said. “This season wasn’t about one game or one loss. It was about building a program. And the kids really did a lot of positive things all year long, and took a great step.”