Goal Line Stand Preserves Methacton Win Over Oxford
Tagged under: District 1, Gameday Hub, News, pfn
Willie McGonigle | September 11, 2026
EAGLEVILLE: One thing that Methacton Head Coach Eric Ranieri has preached is doing your job. On a night that their offense struggled the Warrior defense did their job, stepping up when their team needed it the most by coming up with a goal-line stand with 4:39 left in the fourth quarter and allowing the Warrior offense to run out the rest of the clock, preserving the 14-8 Warriors victory over the visiting Oxford Hornets Thursday night at Warrior Stadium.
The late-game drama came on the next Hornet drive after the Warriors took the lead on the drive before. On the third play of the drive, Braden Hunt rumbled his way for a 49-yard gain that put the Hornets at Warrior 6. After a pass interference penalty moved the Hornets to the Warriors’ 3rd, the Hornets faced a 4th-and-goal from 3. QB Nolan Neskie elected to keep the ball on a read option and rolled to his left, where he was met almost instantly by Brennan McFadden, who brought him down at the 2, preserving the lead. “I just stayed focused, kept to my objective, stayed outside and got a tackle,” McFadden said of the stop. Ranieri said, “Huge. Huge. I thought we had good field position with them on the other side, but they got down here too quickly, and it’s just one of those where those guys stepped up when we needed them. We are trying to build something here at Methacton, and we talk about three things, and one of them is you got to win tight games, and we found a way to do that tonight.”
The goal line was just icing on the cake for the Warrior defense, which played well all night and limited the potent Hornet offense to 263 yards of total offense on the night and limited them to just 109 yards in the second half. “We knew offensively what they (Oxford) wanted to try and do; we knew they have some playmakers on offense. It’s kind of preaching to do our jobs when we play alignment assignment football; we make the plays.” Ranieri added, “Our focus the whole season and up to now has been really making sure we handle our business and doing what we need to do on our end.
The Hornets offense came out of the gate firing, taking the opening drive 89 yards on 12 plays before Hunt took a pitch and went to his right, broke a tackle, and went in for the touchdown. Hunt then powered his way for the two-point conversion, giving the Hornets the early 8-0 lead.
From there, the Warriors defense took over, and it was their defense that provided the much-needed spark, with Jackson Lecky intercepting Neskie and returning it to the Hornet 30, where a personal foul moved the ball to the 15.
The Warrior offense needed just four plays following the turnover to get on the board, with Lecky keeping it himself and taking it from two yards out. William O’Keefe added the extra point, cutting the Hornets’ lead down to 8-7 with 7:45 remaining in the first half.
Despite being limited to mere 58 yards in the opening half the Warriors offense bounced back in the second half amassing 138 yards 76 of those yards came on the go ahead drive that was 12 plays and capped with Lecky finding Grayson Corrigan for a 16-yard touchdown.
“We definitely started out slow offensively, but our guys in the second half came out knew what our jobs were; we knew we had to keep doing it. It wasn’t going to be easy; we just had to do the right thing every play. If there was a setback, we had to come back with a clean slate, a new play every down. ” Lecky said of the offense.
The Warriors will look to extend their winning streak to 3 games next Friday night when they travel to West Chester East. The Hornets will look to snap their two-game losing streak when they host Pottsgrove next Friday. Both games kick off at 7 pm
