The Warrenton boys' soccer team earned a resounding 6-2 win at Wright City on Monday in the Warren County battle.

Still, the comfortable victory was made less so for Warrenton senior forward Tyler Scruggs as the hosts scored the final two goals of the game.

Sure, Scruggs had already tallied a hat trick, and the game was firmly in hand, but the ending left a lot to be desired, the Warrenton captain said.

“I’m frustrated because I think we could have gotten so much more out of this game,” Scruggs said. “At the end of the day, we have to take what the scoreboard says, but we always want to do more.”

Scruggs did plenty, tallying his 11th, 12th and 13th goals to open the door to victory.

He cleaned up a mad scramble in the seventh minute, followed that with a shot slotted inside the left post in the 21st minute and after an Ian Young goal with 11 minutes left in the first half made it 3-0, he tallied his third of the game early in the second half.

Warrenton Coach Jake Brown said he was pleased with the result as the Warriors used the game to try and implement a new attack.

“We were working on things, working the ball through the middle and had a different structure,” Brown said. “We were trying to do a one-one instead of a two-man up top. We tried a forward and a center attacking mid. That was a learning process because we got too sideline-to-sideline instead of playing in the middle.”

Warrenton (7-4) jumped to a 5-0 lead on a goal by Gavin Thompson with 23 minutes left before Wright City (6-10) managed to pull a pair back.

The Wildcats' tallies came from sophomore Landon Luetkenhaus with 18 minutes left and from freshman Giannie Tiscareno with five to play.

Wright City Coach Tori Harris said she challenged her team at halftime, and they accepted. She praised junior back-up keeper Brayden Swayze, who subbed in early for the injured senior Joseph Hall.

“Brayden played huge for us; he really hasn’t played that much in goal for us,” Harris said. “My biggest thing, at halftime, I was telling the boys to not give up. I wanted them to keep pushing through even if things weren’t happening for them. They did just that and I was proud of them.”

Warrenton freshman Braxton Tucker rounded out the scoring with 6.9 seconds to play.

Senior Rylee McGee earned the win in goal for Warrenton as he recorded six saves.

The win marked the eighth straight for Warrenton over the team’s Warren County neighbor. Overall, Warrenton leads the series by a 9-5 tally.

“It’s special because we always want to beat these guys; we want to beat them bad,” said Ross of Wright City. “When we play them, it’s five minutes from home. Even if it’s an away game, it feels like a home game. We want to beat them bad. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that done, but we still got the win.”