WARDEN — The Warden football team fell at home against Manson on Friday night, 27-0, and moved to 1-1 for the season.

Manson scored in the first quarter on a big run and pulled ahead 7-0. The Cougars had a shot to even the game in the second quarter but were turned away on downs near the goal line. Manson connected on a passing touchdown to go to 13-0 before the half.

Warden’s JC Martinez started the second half with an interception to halt the Manson offense briefly. Manson found the end zone again with some trickery in the backfield to jump ahead 19-0 heading into the fourth.

A one-yard run brought Manson to 27-0 in the final five minutes for the shutout. Cougars Julian Egia and Cael Cox combined for 154 yards rushing in the game on Friday, with Egia leading the way with 87 yards. Cox chipped in seven tackles on the defensive side for the Cougars.

Egia said he’s doing his best to prepare some of the younger players for seasons to come.

“We’ve got a bunch of younger kids on our team, so hopefully it will help them out next year and they’ll do good,” Egia said. “Just helping other players out with all this COVID stuff going on.”

While Egia said this isn’t the season he was hoping for, he’s making the most out of what he has.

Warden head coach Robert Arredondo said Egia is someone he can count on to always run hard.

“Tonight, he was actually playing with a little thigh bruise, but you couldn’t tell it,” Arredondo said. “He ran hard, ran good.”

Arredondo tipped his hat to the Manson team for running and tackling hard. He said he saw a lot of good things out of his team even in defeat.

“We did some good things, we gave up big plays, that was our big deal,” Arredondo said. “We’ll just come back next week and try to figure it out.”

Quarterback Zach Elizalde left with an injury midway through the game, returning for a few plays late in the fourth quarter. Arredondo said it’s never easy losing your quarterback mid-game after watching them prepare.

Moving forward, Arredondo said he and his coaching staff will focus on the positives from Friday and the season opener against Oroville.

“We’re going to go back and build on the good things we did tonight and go up there to Okanogan and go to fight again,” Arredondo said.

The Cougars face off against Okanogan Friday night at 7 p.m.

Casey McCarthy can be reached at [email protected].