The Warrenton football team finished up its best regular season in 18 years last week by beating Fort Zumwalt East, 42-35, at home.

The Warriors (8-1) earned the No. 1 seed in the Class 4, District 7 tournament, and will host No. 8 Marshall (0-9) Friday at 7 p.m.

“It’s nice to win your last game of the season against a tough, quality opponent like Fort Zumwalt East,” Warrenton Head Coach Steve McDowell said. “We knew it was going to be a tough matchup, and I think we played a really good ballgame. That should give us some confidence going into district play.”

As the top seed, Warrenton would host all three district games, beginning Friday night.

A win over Marshall would earn the Warriors a matchup with No. 4 Helias or No. 5 Wentzville Liberty, which also play Friday.

“You might look ahead a little bit to different possibilities, but you still have to maintain your focus on this week,” McDowell said. “Because if you don’t, it does you absolutely no good to look ahead.”

Warrenton beat Liberty on opening night, 49-21.

“It would be good to see them again, but it’s always tough to see a team a second time,” he added. “It’s going to be a good matchup between Liberty and Helias, and whoever wins that game, we’ll be happy to host.”

To survive the first weekend of win-or-go-home games, Warrenton will face a pass-happy Marshall offense.

“They like to throw the ball quite a bit,” McDowell said. “From what we’ve seen on film, they’re going to throw the ball 78 percent of the time. So we’re going to prepare to defend against the pass. They’ve had some struggles offensively throughout the season, and I think they’re just trying to find their identity right now. So we’re going to have to be disciplined and limit our mistakes.”

Coming into this season, Warrenton hadn’t won more than six games since 2010, when this year’s senior class was in fifth grade.

But the coaching staff noticed a different vibe around the program nearly five months ago.

“I think the players have totally bought into everything we’ve wanted to do,” McDowell said. “We have a great core of kids that have been here since we started on May 30. They put in hard work throughout the offseason, and they want to succeed. All that work has really helped our ballclub this season. We don’t dress a ton of kids out, which is sometimes beneficial because you have your core group that believes in what you’re doing.”

On the bottom half of the bracket, No. 2 Moberly (7-2) will host No. 7 Kirksville (2-7), and No. 3 Hannibal (5-4) will host No. 6 Warrensburg (5-4).

“We believed we could get a conference championship, and then we talked about a district championship and what it’s going to take to achieve that,” McDowell said. “We’ll take it one game at a time in the district, and we know what we have to do to improve. We’ve wanted to improve each and every week this season, and that continues to be our goal heading into districts.”