SHORT GAP, W.Va. — When Frankfort struck first early in the second half, it would’ve been easy for Calvary to fade away. The Eagles took the hard road.
Calvary upped its energy midway through the final period, and Sammy Scritchfield found the tying and winning goals to lift the Eagles to a 2-1 victory over Frankfort on Thursday.
Scritchfield’s go-ahead strike was all hustle, saving a ball that seemed destined to go out of play before shooting a low shot through the keeper’s legs from an impossible angle with 15:52 left.
“Any time we play local schools and win, it’s a big win for us,” Calvary head coach Dave Ziler said. “We’re a small school, 125 kids and playing (three) eighth graders. To come out here and play with a varsity team like Frankfort and win, it’s huge.”
Calvary improved to 7-1 with the victory, bouncing back from its first defeat of the season on Tuesday to Cumberland Valley. The start is the best in Calvary boys soccer history.
Frankfort suffered its first loss to fall to 4-1. The Falcons outscored their first four opponents 19-1 but knew they were in for a fight Thursday.
“It was a good game, I thought it was played at a very high level,” Frankfort head coach Jason Vaughan said. “It was what we expected. Sammy is a great striker. You give him any chance to score, and he’ll score. We gave him two chances and he scored them.
“I’m happy with the goal we got. I’m happy some with the chances we created, but we need to finish better. I’ll just applaud them for their effort and their tenacity. They were first to the ball all game, and we really struggled to possess because of that.”
After a scoreless first half, Liam Orndorff gave Frankfort the lead with 32:16 to play. A Caden Vaughan corner kick went uncleared, and Orndorff’s shot was ricocheted into the left corner.
Calvary was stunned at first and took about 10 minutes of game time to recover, but Scritchfield found the equalizer with 19:15 remaining.
“Our team has a lot of heart,” Ziler said. “When you’re young, you have to have the heart to stay in these games. Our team, all through the season so far, has had the heart of a champion. They fight through adversity.
“Even when they get down, it takes them a minute or two and they shake it off and get refocused. We have a lot of tough-minded kids who have a lot of grit in their gut.”
Riley O’Brien controlled a bouncing ball with his head and delivered it to Scritchfield at the top of the box, and the sophomore striker took his time, settled and slid a low shot inside the left post to tie the game.
A little more than three minutes later, Scritchfield’s hustle produced the winner.
Calvary made a tactical adjustment up top to help give its star forward space. The move paid off.
“Sammy is well known in the area, probably the best striker in the area, and so he draws a lot of attention,” Ziler said. “We made some adjustments at halftime, to where we took our senior Riley (O’Brien), took him off the midfield and put him up top to pull the pressure off of Sammy.
“He’s probably faster than Sammy. He can just take enough pressure off to give Sammy an open shot. If they sleep on Riley, he can put in the back of the net too.”
Frankfort had a pair of early opportunities to score in the first half when the ball bounced around the box and wasn’t cleared, but neither netted goals.
Calvary also had dangerous openings off the foot of Scritchfield. He was denied by a pair of solid saves by Jake Layton in goal.
Frankfort had one final opportunity to score when Hayden Whetsel lined up for a direct free kick from 23 yards out with 2:30 remaining. His shot went high.
Scritchfield had a free kick chance earlier in the half from a similar spot but struck the right post.
Both teams took nine shots, and Calvary had a 7-6 edge on corner kicks. Peyton Poland made nine saves for the Eagles and Layton made six stops.
Calvary is at Heritage on Monday at 4:30 p.m. Frankfort hosts Petersburg on Tuesday at 6 p.m.
Vaughan hopes the Falcons can learn and build from their first defeat going into the rest of their schedule.
“This is the type of game where you expect growth,” he said. “So that they can see what level of effort is needed to win these games and what you have to do to go win them.”