OAKS — It was another rough night on the gridiron last Thursday night for the Gans Grizzlies as they lost 50-0 to the host Oaks Warriors in a game called in the third quarter due to the 45-point mercy rule.

The Grizzlies (0-2), who are still looking not only for their first win of the 2024 season, but the first win for new coach Gary Hixon, were outmanned on Thursday night.

“We had some discipline issues I had to take care of during the week,” Hixon said. “We were short-handed. We had practice on Labor Day, but half our team showed up and half our team didn’t. Our policy is if you miss a practice, you have to sit out the first quarter. Both of our quarterbacks didn’t play in the first quarter. We were still chasing our tails more than anything else.”

The Warriors (1-1) led 22-0 after a period, 36-0 at halftime and scored twice in the third quarter — the last score coming on a fumble recovery return — to have the 45-point mercy rule be invoked.

Hixon said the Grizzlies are still trying to learn how to win.

It’s hard to instill a culture when you’re young,” he said. “We are very young. We installed some different types of run schemes we felt would help. The same stuff we installed early, we still can’t run correctly. Sometimes we don’t know our own right from our left. It’s kind of frustrating. It’s a learning process. We’re still growing.”

The loss was even harder to take for Gans as senior Gabriel Christopherson suffered a season-ending broken collarbone injury.

“He was our best receiver,” Hixon said about Christopherson. “He ran routes so great. He’s out for the rest of the season, unfortunately.”

The Grizzlies will hope home cooking provides the spark needed to seek win No. 1 on the new season as they will entertain the Watts Engineers at 7 p.m. this Friday at Grizzly Field.

“I hope we’re still excited to play,” Hixon said. “After getting beat twice 50-0, it can be disheartening. Like I told the kids, I’m not going to quit on them, and I don’t want them to quit on me — but we’ve got to learn that we have to do things correctly, and we’re going to have to learn it fast. It’s back to fundamentals this week. We’re going to work on us more than we’re going to work on what Watts does, scheme wise. We had people out of position on defense (in the Oaks game) due to the discipline thing. We just have to find our best eight, put them out there somewhere and let the chips fall where they may.”