It was an intense battle on Tuesday evening as the Miami Trace Panthers hosted the Circleville Tigers in the first round of DIII Southeast District boys soccer action. It took extra time, but the Panthers ultimately prevailed with a 2-1 victory.

Circleville drew first blood, scoring at the 24 minute mark on a direct kick following a handball on the Panthers.

The score would remain 1-0 at the half, and would stay that way until there were just under two minutes to play in the contest.

Circleville was called for a foul inside the penalty box, awarding Miami Trace a penalty kick. Junior Landon Burns was tasked with the opportunity, and he punched it through into the back right corner of the net to tie the game late.

In the closing seconds of the second half, senior Spencer Smith took a shot at the goal and narrowly missed, hitting the crossbar. Time would run out in the half with the score remaining tied.

This sent the match to a 15-minute sudden death period, meaning that the next team to score would claim victory.

At the 12:49 mark, the Tigers were once again called for a foul inside the penalty box, and once again Burns was given the opportunity to win the game for his team. It was the back left corner this time, as Burns knocked it through to seal the game and move the Panthers on to the next round of the tournament.

Miami Trace head coach Josh Thoroman shared some comments following the victory.

“Coach Evan Callahan has done an excellent job with the Circleville program. They have been down for several years. I remember my first year here, they were the number one seed, I think they might have been undefeated, and they beat us twice that year pretty bad. We have traded some wins back and forth over the years, but they have had some rough patches. Last season and this season, they have won a lot of games. He is doing a good job and his team was ready to play

“One thing they did to us was they packed the defensive third which makes it tough to score. Then, they had the classic recipe for an upset when they got the goal early in the first half. We told our boys at halftime that we were getting what we wanted and we were playing really well, we had a bunch of one-on-one opportunities but just couldn’t score. Them packing the box just made it that much harder.

“We are thrilled to get out of here with the win tonight. We will travel to Marietta on Thursday and they are the one seed in the tournament. We just have to play them really good on one night, sometimes we can be really good in spurts, so we’ll see what happens.”

The No. 8 seed Panthers will travel to Marietta High School on Thursday at 6 p.m. to take on the No. 1 seed Tigers.