Preston Moloney returns to field for Pender a year after surviving shooting

Preston Moloney returns to field for Pender a year after surviving shooting

Preston Moloney returns to field for Pender a year after surviving shooting

Preston Moloney returns to field for Pender a year after surviving shooting

Preston Moloney returns to field for Pender a year after surviving shooting

Preston Moloney was shot in the shoulder after a postgame party last fall. This season, he’s back on the field, leading Pender on both sides of the ball.
Published: Oct. 3, 2024 at 7:36 PM EDT
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BURGAW, N.C. (WECT) – In hindsight, Preston Moloney says he should’ve left the party. But he didn’t have a ride home. So after the altercation, the details blur together.

Someone yelled “gun.” People started running. A whistling sound, a burning sensation on the left shoulder. Blood. An ambulance. A mother crying. A coach fearing the worst.

Nearly a year later, that’s what Moloney remembers from the night after Pender High School lost its football game against Heide Trask. A Halloween party nearly turned fatal, with Moloney surviving a gunshot wound that could’ve easily ended his football career – and, his life.

“My first thought was, ‘Am I gonna live?’” he recalled before a recent Pender practice. “When I found out I was alright, my second thought was, ‘Will I ever be able to play sports again?’”

While Moloney was taken to the hospital, friends woke up his mom to tell her the news. He said seeing her cry – worried he would lose his life – hurt more than getting shot.

The bullet hit an artery, giving Moloney a torn rotator cuff. But when he found out surgery would take him off the field this season, he decided to gut it out. He spent three weeks working to regain mobility before getting back in the weight room.

Now, despite playing with a bullet lodged in his shoulder and a significant shoulder injury, Moloney says the pain is more mental than physical.

“I still feel pain, but it’s something you just gotta go through,” he said. “I made a dumb decision. You gotta pay for your dumb decisions, but I’m willing to pay for mine.”

The surgery will happen this spring – after the multi-sport athlete finishes baseball season.

But his focus now is on the current season. The Patriots are 3-2 going into a week seven test at East Bladen, and Moloney says the goal is to find the success they had his freshman year when Pender notched 10 wins.

When his head coach, Tom Eanes, got the call last October, he assumed the situation was much worse. Eanes has coached football for parts of five decades but has never had a player get shot.

Eanes knew the impact losing Moloney would have on the team. Moloney plays offensive guard and defensive tackle and is one of Pender’s leaders on both sides of the ball. When offenses break the huddle, Moloney is the player calling out the defense’s response instead of the linebackers who usually would, Eanes said.

“Preston does a lot for us,” Eanes said. “So with his presence not being in there, that hurts a lot.”

Moloney has played football nearly his entire life. Even after last fall’s party, the thought of missing a season with this team is almost incomprehensible to him.

“It’s like having a second family. Most of my life, it was a first family,” he said. “This just means a lot to me. It’s something I never want to lose.”

And a year later, it’s the concepts of loss – and luck – that resonate with the high school senior.

“Everything that’s being handed to you, everything you’ve worked for, don’t take it for granted,” he says. “They use the words, ‘play like it’s your last game, play like it’s your last snap ever,’ and that was almost a reality – losing a game that could have been my last game ever.”

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