Harrington Goal Lifts Drury over Taconic
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Ben Harrington scored with fewer than four minutes remaining Wednesday to give the Drury boys soccer team a 3-2 win over Taconic.
It was a back and forth type of game with both teams battling to find the edge, and with all five goals coming from a set piece it seemed that was the route to win.
The game started off with Taconic (3-4) dominating possession in the midfield, forcing Drury (2-2) to defend. The first real chance of the game came from Taconic, who forced Drury’s keeper, Colin Daly into a nice double save that came from a shot from deep that he deflected forcing him to make a sliding second save. Daly was the backup keeper until starter Parker Rivard was injured earlier in the season.
“Colin wanted to play the field this year, but when Parker got hurt I told him it was his net and to just play his game and control the box, he played a phenomenal game.” Drury head coach John Jacobbe said. “The game could have been a whole different score if not for Colin in net.”
Drury continued to withstand the pressure from Taconic and finally got some pressure of its own forcing the first corner kick of the game. Junior Rommel Alvarez, who has been a set piece specialist early on in the season delivered a nice ball to the near post that was headed home by Matt Howland to give Drury the 1-0 lead in the 19th minute against the run of play.
It wasn’t until the 29th minute where Taconic started to get things going once again working a nice string of passes up the sideline for a corner kick of their own. Just like Drury, the Thunder was able to capitalize with a Andres Toapanta corner that Frederick Yankey was able to finish to bring the score level at 1-1 going into the halftime break.
Drury was the first to answer after the break, scoring a second goal just nine minutes in when Landon Langenback was taken down just outside the box. Rommel Alvarez got his second assist on the day sending one in for Jorge Bond who calmly finished it off with a left footed volley giving them a 2-1 lead.
Taconic bounced right back just as they did in the first half this time Frederick Yankey was the setup man finding Mario Bonilla who placed a nice shot in the side netting to level it up once again.
Taconic built off of that second goal momentum and really looked like they would get a third goal pinning Drury deep in their own half. Colin Daly came up big a few more times in net making some tough reaction saves as well as some timely runouts. It wasn’t until the 76th minute when Drury won a free kick from the halfway line that they grabbed the winner once again off a set piece from Alvarez, who forced the keeper into a save that he dropped and Harrington was there to finish it off with an assist from Bond. This was Drury’s first win in more than five years against Taconic and Jacobbe was pleased with the result.
“I told the guys I wanted a signature win and this was a signature win, we haven’t beaten Taconic in five years and now we have,” he said. “Rommel [Alvarez] fed some great balls off set pieces but I think we had a few more chances on breakaways that we needed to start finishing.”
Drury will face McCann next week on the road while Taconic will look to forget about this one when they play Lenox, next week.