The Warrenton football team landed on the right side of their three-year rivalry with the Hannibal Pirates during their Class 4, District 5 championship game on Nov. 15. 

After suffering three consecutive season-ending losses to Hannibal, the Warriors rewrote history and broke through with a 42-28 victory on their home turf. 

This win also ended another year's long hiatus. For the first time since 2010, Warrenton will return to the Class 4 State Tournament. 

After taking on the head coach role in 2021, Jason Koper has cemented his first district title. He says the feat feels “unbelievable.” 

The Warriors will travel to West Plains this Saturday, Nov 23, to take on the Zizzers at 1 p.m. in the Class 4 state quarterfinal round. 

“I’m just so proud of our guys. They put so much work into this. It’s four years of commitment from these seniors and they bought into what we were selling here,” Koper said. “We pushed them hard and we told them we were going to push them hard in the last couple years. I just couldn’t be more proud of them.” 

One of Koper’s goals when we first got hired was to reach this point, and he said he could not have reached this goal without the coaching staff. 

“Those guys give up so much time to do what we do and time away from their families. They do a phenomenal job,” Koper said. “And these players are just unbelievable. I mean, I love these kids. They’re my own kids…They just do everything I ask and then some and they keep going.” 

The Warriors ended Hannibal’s four-year streak of being district champions. Koper said just their name on the jersey was a hurdle within itself they had to overcome. 

“What they do year in and year out is truly amazing. Hannibal has a phenomenal program, so hats off to the coaching staff over there,” Koper said. “We’ve been wanting this since we lost freshman year to that animal team. As soon as we beat Osage, it was just a different feeling,” Senior Austin Haas added. 

Not only did Haas endure three consecutive losses to the Pirates, but they ended his junior year season after he had to leave mid-game due to broken ribs. Haas noted this was a big motivation for him coming into this year’s championship game. 

Before the game, Warrenton wanted to establish a run game, which is exactly what they did with Haas leading the pack. Haas ran for three touchdowns and caught two touchdown passes from quarterback Brandon Johnson. Haas finished with 268 rushing yards on 31 carries. He also caught two passes for 88 yards.

Johnson ran for one touchdown on their second drive of the night, which put the first six points up on the board. He ran for 92 yards on 14 carries and completed seven of 10 passes for 126 yards.

“It was my big boys [offensive line], thank them. That’s the five touchdowns. That’s all them,” Haas said. 

Johnson noted his motivation coming into the game was ending their three-year losing streak to the Pirates. 

“The motivation was them beating us the last three years. It really put a fire in us,” Johnson said. 

Now that the Warriors have won a highly anticipated game, Johnson’s motivation has changed. 

“We feel kind of disrespected so that always puts a fire in us being underdogs. Even when we have a bad record or better whatever, we still get predicted to lose, so that’s a big part of it,” Johnson said. 

Koper specified Johnson and Haas as two players that had a standout performance. 

“It was a gutsy performance by Austin Haas tonight. I mean, Brandon Johnson, the offensive line, they did everything we asked them to do,” Koper said. “We had that huge stop down there on defense and being able to run the clock out and run the ball like we do gives us a good chance.” 

Warrenton’s huge stop on defense came with about six minutes left in the game, as the Warriors led 42-28. The Warriors denied the Pirates within their red zone, stopping them on a fourth-down attempt on Warrenton’s 13-yard line. 

Senior linebacker Kadin Stroer had a team-high eight tackles, while Treyvian Guthrie and Haas had six stops apiece. Javon Jones, Jake Mincher and Stroer each recorded one sack.

“Our defense has done that a lot of times this year. I couldn’t even begin to count how many times we’ve done that. So, I’m not surprised that they did it and I’m grateful they did because we needed that stop,” Koper said. 

The Warriors went into the game led by first-year quarterback Johnson. Looking back towards the beginning of the summer, Johnson never knew he would progress this well. 

“That first game against Wright City was terrible,” Johnson laughed. “But, just every week getting better and better and working on my craft. That’s it, the whole time, I was just practicing,” Johnson said. 

Even with the Warriors’ accomplishment, the expectations remain the same. 

“It’s one play at a time, one game at a time, one quarter at a time, just the same thing we’ve been doing,” Koper said. “We’ll get to film tomorrow morning and start going to work.

“This is new territory for me being a coach in the quarterfinals, but it feels great to be one of the best eight teams in the state.”