Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Howland junior Demetri Gentis (3) and Fitch junior Jackson Potkonicky (7) fight for possession of the ball during Tuesday night's conference matchup.
HOWLAND -- Eighty minutes weren't enough to produce a winner on Tuesday.
After a scoreless first half, Howland and Austintown Fitch ratcheted up the intensity in the second half and played to a 1-1 draw to begin All-American Conference play.
"That's probably the best Fitch team that has come into our stadium in the last six years that I've been around," Tigers head coach Nick Sheely said. "But it's a conference game. It's only the second goal we've given up all year. It's disappointing because you want to keep clean sheets and everything else. Anytime you get scored on, you're never happy. So it's a little bit of a letdown, but it's a learning experience. It's conference play -- both teams came out and it was just a brawl."
With the tie, the Tigers remain unbeaten (4-0-2) on the season, while the Falcons record their fourth consecutive draw.
"We're having a season where this is our fourth straight draw in a game where we could have scored three or four goals," Falcons coach Anthony James said. "So our team doesn't really lack confidence. We have a very confident group, and we believed in ourselves coming on the road to play against a top-level team.
During a scoreless first half, Howland maintained the majority of the possession, but Fitch still had no shortage of chances either, as the Falcons attempted to hit the Tigers on the counterattack.
Howland's ball pressure in Fitch's own half was relentless, which made it difficult for the Falcons to consistently possess the ball the way they wanted to.
"We play differently to most teams, where we want to keep the ball," James said. "We don't just go forward for the sake of going forward. So we felt like we were in control in terms of sometimes just soaking up the pressure."
The Tigers were finally able to break the deadlock shortly after halftime. In the 45th minute, junior Demetri Gentis pounced on a ball that was misplayed by a Falcons defender and smashed a shot into the net at the near post to give Howland a 1-0 lead.
"I think we just started trusting ourselves," Sheely said. "There's stuff we recognized in the first half, and then we finally just took advantage of it for that first seven minutes (of the second half) to get us up 1-0."
One of Fitch's best chances came on a breakaway down the left wing in the 61st minute, but the shot was saved and deflected out of play by Howland junior goalkeeper Carter Jones.
Over the final 10-15 minutes, it was Fitch on the attack, as the Falcons turned up the aggressiveness and pushed forward. Finally, after a number of chances, Fitch equalized off the foot of senior Nolan Mickey with under four minutes left.
"The thinking is, it was just one of those things where the players realized that if we didn't step it up, it probably would have been our first L in the last four or five games," James said. "The final few minutes, I think we just played with a greater sense of urgency -- understanding that we were creating so many chances -- we had maybe three or four clear-cut chances. So I can tell the kids were in a space where they didn't want to be denied."
Fitch's next game comes on Saturday, when it travels to Massillon Perry at 1 p.m., while the Tigers will visit fellow conference foe Canfield on Thursday at 7 p.m.
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