The Fox Warriors just spent three months putting on a clinic in how a team from Jeff County’s hotbed can go .500, fail to win a single playoff game, and still set a standard for other schools to aspire to when it comes to competing at the state level. Yes, our #5 out of 12-ranking brand is capable of shaking up a state contender in one of Missouri’s top weight classes. Welcome to the year 2026!
Fox fought District 1’s favorite Farmington to a midgame stalemate that reminded The Geek of the Warriors’ 0-13 “Not a Forfeit” loss to DeSmet in the 2020 postseason. The Black Knights claimed a 21-7 lead in the second quarter and expected to pull away, but the Warriors’ veterans wouldn’t let ’em score another point for about 20:00 … and Arnold’s offense had its shining moments too. Senior QB Jude Pribish had a 100-yard rushing day, while his classmate Ryan Joggerst averaged over six yards-per-carry against a Black Knights defense that made Hillsboro’s nice ensemble sound more like The Shaggs on October 16. Fox didn’t play quite as well on offense as St. Pius against common-foe Farmington, but Fox was better in the third quarter, showing great stamina. Tight end Gavin Pecoraro snagged two receptions, leaving an impactful RB Jacob Edwards as one of the Warriors’ only skill cogs who wasn’t a full-time Iron Man linchpin for an upset bid that lasted almost four quarters. Remember, the DeSmet Spartans of 2020 may’ve also mistakenly thought that they could wear down a squad that was galloping both ways.
The Warriors were impressive on defense in the 28-7 loss, proving The Geek wrong that Farmington’s hurry-up is the antidote for a defense with fine linebackers. The Joggerst-Pecoraro combination took down 14 Black Knights on solo tackles. The junior standout Carson Younger caught an interception of QB A.J. Robbins. Fox limited Farmington to its second-lowest point total of the season.
Fox’s student-athletes set a standard for JeffCo’s five teams who hope to be in the state playoffs by Saturday. Holding “realistic 9-1” Farmington to three TDs in the first three-quarters-and-change is a sterner defensive effort than almost any Dirty Dozen brand has put on the books this campaign. AJ Robbins’ team scored close to a combined 90 points against Sikeston and St. Pius X this year. Arnold, by shutting Farmington down for much of the second half, illustrated that “Lee’s Summit 2025”-level performances are not impossible for our kids, even if they’re “only” in Class 5. Should the Seckman Jaguars hold Jackson’s similar offense to just 28 points in Week 12, wow, what a shot that would give the Jaguars to manufacture the county’s biggest-ever win in Class 6.
Sure, the Black Knights were missing Josh McCarthy. Farmington head coach Brent Eckley made sure to let everyone know that the Knights couldn’t retaliate to the Warriors’ physical effort with his own best linebacker in Week 11. But the Farmington head coach let everyone know a bunch of things after last Friday’s fracas, and the bemoaning of McCarthy’s injury was just the tip of the iceberg.
Did the Fox Warriors shake up the Farmington Knights mentally, as well as physically? It seemed that way when Eckley appeared for what should have been a gracious postgame chat on MyMyInfo. His side won, after all, beating Fox a second straight year to arrive in Week 12 in a second of two seasons under Eckley. But the coach sounded bitter, upset, and unhappy with his lot in Missouri pigskin, beginning by making fun of MSHSAA, and then moving on to poke fun at the other schools (!) in C5D1.
‘We did real well for a No. 4 seed that faced the No. 1 seed,” Eckley began. “Winning over a district’s big-shot high seeds as a No. 4 seed, man, you’d think a No. 1 seed like Fox with a better record than ours would’ve won, but our little 5-5 team with the 5-5 record which has the No. 4 seed with a 5-5 record, can actually win. Crazy, huh?!?’ (That’s not exactly what he said, but that’s the vibe.)
Remember when Jerry Seinfeld used to say, “We ALLLLLLLLL Get It!”? We alllllll get it, Coach Eckley. Farmington should have been seeded No. 1 in the district, and now, the Black Knights are proving that. Look, Coach Eckley gets credit as one of the finest head coaches in Missouri no matter what internal noise he’s got going on right now. Eckley’s right that Farmington deserved a No. 1 seed, but that doesn’t mean you should shoot sarcastic arrows at the other three contenders for seeding ahead of you. Fox has beaten Ladue High and Parkway West while going to overtime twice with Seckman in the past two seasons, and the Warriors were gonna seed #2 if they didn’t seed #1! Eckley shouldn’t imply that a #2 seeded team can’t be favored over Farmington, at any seed, to win the district, since well … have you seen “#2” St. Mary’s play lately?
Farmington has yet to prove diddly-squat, at least at the level of a Class 5 state hopeful. The Black Knights surrendered 70 points to a fading Kirkwood brand in last year’s Q-Finals, one which went on to get blown out in its next bout, all while Kirkwood’s underclass somehow made Webster Groves’ juniors look more proficient than they ought to have looked in the 2025 Turkey Day Game. The Farmington Black Knights of 2026 didn’t outpace Northwest’s #4 ranking JeffCo squad against Joggerst’s noble defense, and Farmington was crushed by Jackson compared to the Jackson defense’s pretty-good efforts vs. St. Mary’s and Hannibal.
The Dragons will host the Black Knights for the title, and that sure feels like a Saturday matchup. Let’s check MSHSAA’s Week 12 Scoreboard. Nope – the St. Mary’s Dragons are going to be turning their Friday Night Lights on. Oh, man, St. Mary’s loves to play on November afternoons. Could it be that the Dragons didn’t try to switch MSHSAA’s tourney final to Saturday because they’ve observed what The Geek has observed – that the Black Knights’ coach is walking a very dicey tightrope into a danger zone?
Week 12’s Black Knights may be focused on the Dragons. But the head coach doesn’t seem to be. Eckley is still seething about the four forfeits, looking backward to Labor Day instead of forward to Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, it’s going to be cold – and breezy – this Friday night, and that suits the Dragons just fine, with their catch-and-run wide receivers, and the 1000-yard running back Milano “Cortina” Mitchell Jr. to gallop with the football. Farmington, while its coaching staff is busy playing the victim card, had another troubling injury case with the standout tailback Walker Laut. It could force the Black Knights to throw too often on an icy evening. McCarthy’s absence leaves the Knights without their own ‘Pecoraro’ TE + LB standout, but he’s also a critical WR-bomb threat. Farmington’s coaches will only draw up the same old Air-Raid plan if they’re distracted! St. Mary’s knows how to defend that.
Farmington can beat St. Mary’s. Yet, the Black Knights aren’t an “invisible” No. 1 seed lording above the Dragons, who beat DeSmet a few weekends ago. They might just be underdogs at St. Mary’s until proven otherwise, considering how much harder the South Side school’s schedule was on the trek to its 7-3 record. What if the Black Knights drop passes, fall short on 4th-and-1, and otherwise freeze up against one of STL’s top defenses? St. Mary’s and Fox will look like the “real” high seeds after all.
Elsewhere in Class 5, the Summit Falcons have finally taken flight, rebounding from an early season in which The Geek was sure that the Falcons were unhappy with their coaches, based on the team’s droopy and uninspired body language in losses to Valle, Eureka, and Kirkwood. Fenton has beaten Marquette and Parkway West decisively over the last few weekends. They’ll get an opportunity to right the wrong versus Eureka in the C5D1 Championship Game, but must prevail at EHS to lift the hardware.
Ritter’s labored win over Ladue confirms The Geek’s belief that Valle Catholic could beat Cardinal Ritter right now. (They really shouldn’t name schools after people, if sentences are going to come across that way. It’s only a sports metaphor, Father Ritter *clears throat nervously* sir.) However, the Varsity Lions still look like probable to move into the state playoffs due to their upcoming matchup with vulnerable Chaminade. Chaminade’s win over Lift For Life looks bad on LFL, not good on CCP.
Timberland and Fort Zumwalt North meet for District 4’s championship after warring in OT this midseason. FZNHS’s team is another late-comer that looked like hell to start the year, then warmed up and whipped an excellent St. Dominic program 40-0 last weekend. Timberland’s head-to-head win’s got the “Wolves” seeding No. 1 in the bracket, but Stoke City the Panthers still feel like favorites.
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