On the night Jenny Jansen would become Warrenton girls basketball’s all-time leading scorer, she was left in the dark.

And for good reason.

Jansen came into Friday’s game against Lutheran South knowing she was close to the all-time Warrenton scoring record, held by Jill Sutton (Class of 2007), but she didn’t know how close.

“Coach wouldn’t tell me what it would take before the game, so I was unprepared going into it,” Jansen said after her team’s 61-46 win. “But coming out and breaking the record was really awesome. Coach told me I needed between 10 and 50, and he wouldn’t tell me because on my 1,000-point night, it was bad.”

Jansen and her teammates struggled in the first half, and Head Coach Greg Williams played four bench players in the first quarter, an uncharacteristically high number for the Warriors coach.

“If we would have played like that against Washington, we would have lost by 400,” he said. “There was no flow or sync, so I said ‘Let’s shake it up a little bit and see what happens.’ I guess you call that coaching. Or anger, I don’t know. There’s only so many things you can tolerate. You’ve got to play hard, you’ve got to play ‘D,’ and I didn’t see it, so we had to give somebody else a chance.”

The shake up worked, starting at the 2:55 mark of the second quarter.

Jansen scored her 10th point of the game — and 1,520th of her career — to top the all-time scoring list.

Warrenton outscored Lutheran South 36-17 in the second and third quarters en route to the double-digit win.

“We obviously didn’t have a great first half so I just talked to my team in the locker room and told them it was a new game, and let’s go out there and play our hardest,” Jansen said. “And obviously it worked out and we got a big win.”

Warrenton improved to 13-3 on the season, and has finished first, second and third in its three regular-season tournaments.

The biggest tournament of the season begins next month, as the Warriors head to the Class 4, District 8 tournament at Wentzville Liberty.

Three seasons ago, Warrenton Activities Director Bobby Spoonster invited Williams to watch Jansen, Anderson and Co. in their first district tournament.

“So I went out and watched their district game, which they lost,” Williams recalled. “They lost in the first round of their districts, but I knew right there that with Kaylee Anderson and Jenny Jansen, that they’ve got the right stuff and this would be a good deal.”

Williams joined the program the next season, and the Warriors have posted a 52-17 record with two district titles since then.

The culture has shifted, leading to Jansen saying, despite finishing third in one of the toughest tournaments in the St. Louis area: “We’re pleased with it, but not satisfied. We wished we could have been in the championship game.”

And despite the impressive record and senior leadership, the program’s goals reach much further than the Washington Tournament, so Williams had no problem pointing out his team’s mistakes in the 15-point win.

The Warriors shot 8-of-20 from the free-throw line, for starters.

“The other night we were 7-of-19, and I promise you guys, we practice free throws. It hurt us against Washington. We shot 35 percent from three and 36 percent from the free-throw line, really?” he asked himself. “(Syracuse Head Coach) Jim Boeheim doesn’t practice them because he doesn’t want to get in their head and stuff, and maybe I’m in their head. But we’re going to keep practicing them because I only know that when you practice, good things happen. I’m not going to ignore a problem. You’ve got to address it, and we’ve got to do that to close out games.”

He was still able to enjoy the win, however.

“We didn’t have our best game tonight, but we settled down and figured it out,” he said. “What a night for Jenny. This is the first kid I’ve coached that’s been the school’s all-time leading scorer. She’s just a competitor and a great kid.”