The opening week of the football season was a new experience for Jordan Lopez.
The Warrenton senior wideout had a breakout effort in his first game at the position, after playing all of 2025 out of a defensive back spot.
In the Warriors’ 34-7 home win over Wright City in the season opener for both teams, Lopez hauled in four catches for 103 yards and a pair of scores.
“This felt great; my entire high school football career, I knew I was a receiver,” Lopez said. “I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to show what I could do, so I wanted to come out and show what I’m capable of doing.”
Lopez, who Warrenton Coach Jason Koper called a ‘natural playmaker,’ made an important play on the team’s first drive.
On a third-down play deep inside the Warriors’ own territory, Warrenton sophomore quarterback Mason Sanders found Lopez in a crowd of defenders to keep the drive alive.
“It felt surreal, the ball was in slow motion,” Lopez said. “I just knew I needed to come down with that catch and to come down with it for my team.”
After junior back Bradley Tucker’s 10-yard run capped the drive, Lopez went back to work.
On the first play of the team’s second drive, Sanders found him for a 44-yard score. Jake Kinney’s second PAT made it 14-0.
“You could see it tonight, Jordan is electric,” Koper said. “He’s been one of our biggest playmakers all summer. If we needed a touchdown in a situation in practice, he went out and did it. He did it again tonight.”
Lopez played the biggest role in Sanders’ debut of 256 yards while Tucker amassed 128 yards and a score on 21 carries.
Sanders said the entire team effort on offense, in which Warrenton amassed 458 total yards and also got rushing scores from Sanders and junior Eli Schneider, was the ideal building block headed into Week 2 and beyond.
“This is a big confidence boost for the year coming up,” Sanders said. “The guys put in the work all summer to help me because I’m such a young quarterback has been amazing. Then to have a guy out there like Jordan working hard is fantastic.”
While the offense was working hard, the Warriors’ defense did its share of the heavy lifting.
Eli Schneider led the team with 10 solo tackles, five assists, three tackles for loss and two sacks while Lopez added four solos, two assists, two tackles for loss and a sack.
Junior defensive back Keegan Lehmkuhl pitched in an interception while sophomore defensive back Henry Schneider added a fumble recovery.
Wright City Coach John Kleekamp credited the Warrenton defense for its body of work.
“We just couldn’t keep momentum going,” Kleekamp said. “We couldn’t string plays together and Warrenton did a good job defensively of closing the door at times and making big plays when they needed to make them.”
On the offensive side of the ball for the Wildcats, senior Benji Rodriguez carried the ball 16 times for 105 yards.
“It didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but the most important game is the next one,” Rodriguez said. “We’re going to learn from this and take it into next week.”
Warrenton won’t get much time to enjoy its win as the team heads on the road to play at Washington (0-1) at 7 p.m., on Thursday. Wright City will open the home portion of its schedule against Westminster (1-0) on Friday.
“We didn’t play well and we’ve got room for growth,” Koper said. “We’ve got to do that in a hurry, though. It’s going to be tough this week.”
