MILTON — With a little over five minutes left in the first half of Friday’s matchup between Warrior Run and Lewisburg, the Defenders were in control.

Up 21-0, Warrior Run was once again marching down the field behind a run game that was clicking early. Defender quarterback James Keifer went to the air after five straight runs to start the drive and found Tyler Ulrich over the middle for another big play, but the ball came loose on the run and, suddenly, Lewisburg had life.

The Green Dragons clawed all the way back to tie the game in the third quarter, setting up an exciting finish and forcing Warrior Run to make a goal-line stand to cement its 29-24 win.

“It was a game of inches tonight,” Warrior Run coach Derrick Zechman said. “They took advantage of a lot of our mistakes; they took it down before the half and grabbed momentum, but our defense came up huge. What a great game we got to see.”

The Defender rushing attack took control on the opening drive of the game with a monster seven-minute, 65-yard scoring drive that ended with a Denyn Beachel 8-yard touchdown run. They did it again on the next drive, with Ulrich scoring his first of three touchdowns on the ground before taking advantage of a Lewisburg fumble and punching it in again just 20 seconds later.

“I have to give all the credit to my line today,” Ulrich said. “Pretty much all of my success today was because they were up there driving the defense back. I couldn’t have asked for a better showing tonight for our guys up front.”

Lewisburg took the late Warrior Run fumble and went 74 yards in less than two minutes to put the Green Dragons on the board. Nick Coleman finished off the drive after catching a pass from Xavier Carter and going 22 yards to the end zone before converting a two-point try and tightening the deficit to 13.

The Lewisburg rally didn’t stop there, though, as Mitch Lorenz caught a Carter pass and went 17 yards for a score to make it a one-possession ballgame. Three straight Warrior Run fumbles gave the Green Dragons multiple chances with good field position and, eventually, they broke through on a 27-yard run from Coleman.

“I told the kids before the game tonight that it was going to be a rollercoaster. We knew we were going to deal with adversity, and something’s not going to go right,” Zechman said. “We just have to clean up our mistakes and take away those fumbles. It’s football, those things happen, but we’ve got to do a better job.”

After Lewisburg took the lead at 22-21, the Defenders shored up. Three straight runs set up a chunk play to Cohen Zechman through the air, and Ulrich put Warrior Run back on top with a 3-yard run. A successful two-point conversion, also from Keifer to Zechman, made it a seven-point game at 29-22.

“The word I’d use to describe tonight is resilience,” Ulrich said. “We battled, and we found a way to grit it out. We’re a really bonded team this year, and we know we can make anything happen.”

It wasn’t over yet, though, and Lewisburg would hold the ball for the final 9:34 of the matchup.

Twice, the drive looked to have stalled out, but roughing the kicker and pass interference penalties kept the Green Dragons’ hopes alive as they entered the red zone. A holding penalty backed Lewisburg up with a third-and-goal from the 12-yard line, but Carter reached the half-yard line with 6.7 seconds left in the game.

Carter lined up under center and tried to push his way over the line, but Warrior Run’s Jackson Albright took matters into his own hands.

“We had to stop them, there was no choice,” he said. “They’d run inside all day and we’d had great communication, so that stop showed that our defense can really put the game on our back if we need to.”

Warrior Run took a safety as the clock ran out, pushing the final score to 29-24.

While it’ll go in the win column for the Defenders, there’s lots the team can improve on before next week’s matchup with North-Penn Mansfield. But, with the way the offense executed a balanced system when they needed to, Zechman is excited for his team to take another step.

“I’m super stoked because that was really a coming-out party for our offensive line tonight,” he said. “When you run the ball like that, they have to sell out to try and stop the runners, but we have a quarterback that’s going to make you pay for that.”