Michael Smith of Warren Central stops the ball as Madison Central’s Bryan Titus closes in Monday night at Viking Stadium. The visiting girls and boys won, 2-1. (The Vicksburg Post/MELANIE DUNCAN)

The Warren Central soccer team will get a well-deserved day off Tuesday.

After battling the top-ranked team in Mississippi to two goals on Saturday, the Vikings (2-2) fell to No. 2 Madison Central, 2-1, in WC’s first home game of the season.

“Coming off playing the number one and number two teams in the state and you play as well as we are in the beginning of the season, I have nothing to hang my head about,” said second-year WC coach Jay Harrison, whose team lost to defending state champion Northwest Rankin on Saturday.

“The guys are playing hard and doing the things I want them to do.”

The Vikings had a good shot at taking down Madison (5-1), holding a 1-0 lead late in the second half.

Todd Monsour dribbled through traffic near the goal and blasted a shot to the far left side for a 1-0 WC lead with 27 minutes left in the second half.

Two minutes later, WC appeared to score another goal after the ball became dislodged from goalie Sean Reed’s hand. The linesman closest to the play ruled the keeper had possession, thwarting the Vikings’ apparent second goal.

The Jaguars picked up the pressure after WC’s goal, but goalie Bradley Downey was true to the test. He stopped 6 of 8 Jaguars’ shots, but two of those were breakaways right on net.

“They should have buried that one,” Harrison said. “Bradley made a spectacular save.”

On the ensuing corner kick, however, Madison’s Bryan Titus scored to knot the game at 1. Ryan Raines, the Jags’ top player, found the back of the net with 11:30 left in the game for the eventual game-winner.

Warren Central, which attempted 12 shots, will be off until Monday when it hosts Greenville at 5:30 p.m.

(G) MC 2, WC 1

Unlike the boys game, where the Vikings had a lead, the Lady Vikes (3-3-1) fell behind by a pair of goals, and a furious charge came up just short against the defending state champion Lady Jags (5-2).

Erin Bramuchi squeaked a first-half goal past Courtney Hubert eight minutes in for a 1-0 Madison lead. The game stayed 1-0 until Rennice Sherrard buried a shot in the back of the net 10 minutes into the second half for a 2-0 lead.

“We played much better in the second half,” WC coach Holly Lane said. “Madison Central is just too fast to wait on the ball. In the first half, we were waiting for the ball to come to us instead of going after it.”

Midway through the second half, WC’s Candis Beard beat Madison’s Meredith Zweinmuller in the top right corner of the goal to shave the lead in half.

“They knew exactly what they had to do in the second half,” Madison coach Mike Curley said. “They put a lot of pressure on us. At the end, we realized that if we wanted to hold the lead, we needed to start putting some offense together.”

Hubert had 11 saves in the loss.