TORRINGTON – The Torrington Blazers celebrated Senior Night in exciting fashion with an overtime victory over the Buffalo Bison on Friday evening.
In the 49th minute, Buffalo broke a scoreless tie, but when the final horn sounded, Torrington stormed back to take a 3-1 victory.
“It was a great win,” THS coach Gabe Bartlett said. “(Buffalo) changed it up on us. We can go through the middle on most teams, but they packed the middle. We tried to make the adjustments at half to make it wide. We put a little more pressure on them in the second half.”
After many attempts to tie the match up again, Torrington finally broke through with a penalty kick by junior Deagan Keith in the 67th minute.
The score remained tied at one through the end of regulation and through the first period of overtime.
Both teams had shots on goal through the first 10 minutes of overtime, but it wasn’t until the teams switched sides when the Blazers broke the tie.
“In the overtime period, we switched formations,” Bartlett said. “We moved Ty Prall up to an outside mid, giving him a chance to get up the field a little more.”
In the 95th minute, Torrington senior Ty Prall had been moved up from the defensive line and was able to out-muscle the Buffalo defensive line and sent a scorcher of a shot screaming past the Bison goalkeeper.
“He has a nose for the ball and makes people nervous,” Bartlett said.
Four minutes later, Keith added a second penalty kick goal to push Torrington’s lead to two with only seconds left in the match.
“Down 1-0 and come all the way back is awesome. On Senior Night, it was great,” Bartlett said.
“(Ty) was a striker starting out, but halfway through his freshman year, he volunteered to move back to defense. As you can see, he’s one of the best, if not the best in the state at the outside back position,” Bartlett added. “Dewey Randall, he just keeps playing. Very coachable kid. He leads by example. Then Landon Norris. I would have liked to get him a little more time, but he’s been here since he was a freshman. I’ve enjoyed being around them these last four years.”
The win moves Torrington to 5-2-2 on the season, and the Blazers host a winless Newcastle at 5:15 p.m.
