The Jonathan Law boys soccer team defeated cross-town rival Foran High, 2-1, on Tuesday night.
After both teams went scoreless through the game’s first 40 minutes, host Law, now with a 3-2-1 record, scored twice in lightning-like fashion over a 17-second span early in the second half.
Senior Craig Calderon made it 1-0 at the 32:17 mark when he drove a shot home from in close after the Lions failed to clear the ball.
At the 32-minute mark, Kevin Linn took a perfectly-timed pass from Herbie Pritchard and his high-rising and well-struck ball easily cleared the right shoulder of Foran keeper Prashant Patel.
Down 2-0, Foran began pressing on the attack and drew to within 2-1 after Leandro Jorge’s low shot from 25 yards out beat Law goalie Jaret Petrie with 20:30 gone in the half.
Leandro’s bullet-like boot with 1:30 to play was tipped up and over the net by Petrie in Foran’s last attempt at an equalizer.
Law finished with 14 shots to six by Foran. Prashant made six saves and Petrie had three. Law also led in corner kicks, 4-3.
“Our program is starting to move in the right direction,” said Law coach Donato Piselli, now in his third year. “We’re in the middle of a stretch of very big games for us and this was an important win.”
The loss by Foran left the Lions with a 1-6 record.
“We had a good second half, after pretty much just kicking it around in the first half,” said head coach Rick DiStefano. “What hurt us was two costly errors on defense. First, we don’t clear the ball and second, we don’t mark Linn after doing a good job up until them of keeping him covered.”
Foran went 6-9-1 last year, qualifying for the Class L tournament, before losing in the first round to RHAM of Hebron.
Law was 2-14 and had won only five games under Piselli up until now. The Eagles have a big match on Friday, a road contest against an always-tough Guilford side.