Charlie Blondin accounted for three touchdowns in his Warrenton debut to help the Warriors win their conference opener against St. Charles.
Warrenton (1-3) beat St. Charles 26-0 in their homecoming game. The Warriors are 1-0 in conference play.
After neither team was able to score in the first quarter, Warrenton exploded for three touchdowns in the last eight minutes of the second quarter to take the lead. Running back Austin Haas opened the scoring with 1-yard touchdown run with just under eight minutes left in the half.
“Once we got that first score, it kind of gave us confidence,” Warrenton football coach Jason Koper said. “Ok, well we got a score. There’s nothing to worry about now. We can do this.”
Later in the half, Charlie Blondin threw a pair of touchdown passes to Colton Brosenne to give Warrenton a 19-0 lead. The first touchdown pass came with under four minutes left. The Warrior offense turned a fumble recovery with 1:06 left in the half into another touchdown. Blondin threw a 14-yard touchdown to Brosenne with eight seconds left in the half. Koper said the late touchdown was a big momentum boost for the Warriors.
“That’s huge. That’s a momentum boost,” Koper said. “We were very excited going into halftime…We’re young, so you need those confidence builders to help keep the momentum going through the rest of the game.”
Warrenton added a touchdown early in the fourth quarter on Blondin’s quarterback sneak from the 1-yard-line to claim a 26-0 lead, which ended up as the final score.
Blondin finished the game with 152 yards passing and 10 yards rushing. Haas led Warrenton in rushing with 123 yards on 20 carries. He also had 47 yards receiving. Brosenne led Warrenton with 55 yards receiving.
Koper noted the offensive balance the Warriors had in Blondin’s debut for Warrenton. He hopes the Warriors can have more balance on offense the rest of the season. The balance will help take some burden off of Haas, who is only a sophomore. The coaching staff is trying to limit him to 15-20 carries per game.
“Now that we have that balance, we’ve started to see that in the third quarter where now they’re bailing on coverage and now we can start to open up the run game a little bit more,” Koper said. “Haas had several good 8, 10-yard runs there in the third quarter. And that’s exactly what we need to win some games.”
The Warrior defense recorded their first shutout of the season. Warrenton has only allowed six points in regulation the last two games.
“Our defense has really been the heart and soul for our team all year,” Koper said. “When we’ve been in summer, our defense absolutely owned the summer. So I knew they were capable of doing that. They’ve had so many timely plays. Once we put it all together, we’re going to be a force, that’s for sure.”
Koper continues to see the Warriors make weekly strides. While the Warriors are still making mistakes, they’re smaller and less frequent mistakes.
“Every day, I feel like we have growth,” Koper said. “And that was our goal this year. It’s like I tell the guys, we are capable of a lot more and we were definitely a better team than 0-3 I think going into this week. The overall growth is tremendous and I feel sorry for teams at the end of the season because we’re starting to play some much better football already.”
Warrenton will host another conference opponent this week. They will play St. Charles West at 7 p.m. Friday.