Hawks defeat Cougars in bi-district overtime thriller

HARLINGEN — Harlingen South assistant coach Jose Galvan described the Hawks’ 2-1 overtime win over Edinburg North in a Class 6A bi-district game as chaotic.

The Edinburg North Cougars took a 1-0 lead during the third minute of the game and then kept Harlingen South off the board for most of the contest. Senior Leo Torres tied the game with just less than six minutes to play to force overtime.

The score remained deadlocked through the first 18 minutes of overtime. Then, with 1:50 on the clock, junior Anthony Villines sent his team and crowd into a frenzy with a game-winning goal. South will face Northside Harlan in the area round of the playoffs.

“Oh my goodness. This is what sports are about. We’re happy for our seniors and we’re proud of the team, and now we’ll get ready for the next round,” said Galvan, out of breath and drenched in sweat from the exhilarating game and victory celebration. “We want to give credit to Edinburg North, they have a fantastic team. We knew they were going to be tough. But we also knew what kind of a team we have. Whenever we’re down, we knew that we had the capacity and the players to go and try to win.”

Harlingen South won the time of possession battle throughout the game, but the Hawks struggled to finish their chances. Adrian Salazar and Joaquin Ovalle helped to set up scoring opportunities with long passes, and Leo Torres, Isaac Garza and Villines worked hard down near the net.

The trio sent a number of shots on goal, and a few off the post and crossbar. Edinburg North goalkeeper Adrian Alvarez had a stellar game in the net and came up with so many stops that South coach Julian Robles declared, “Man, that guy has a lot of saves,” on the Hawks’ sideline.

Dibanhi Villarreal, Adolfo Huerta and Angel Herrera Castañeda led a relentless Cougars defense that helped keep the Hawks off the board. Castaneda scored Edinburg North’s lone goal early to give the Cougars an edge.

“In the first half, if I’m not mistaken, we had about six or seven chances, good chances, and we couldn’t score. That’s the game, sometimes it goes in and sometimes it doesn’t,” Galvan said. “The second half was the same, we were pressuring them and we were lucky that Leo got that first goal because it was already toward the end.”

Edward Mejia, Carlos Gonzalez and Fernando Ortiz also played well throughout the battle for Edinburg North. The Cougars couldn’t maintain possession offensively to find the back of the net a second time, but they were aggressive and physical on defense and competed for loose balls.

Villines powered through despite taking some tough blows in the game. His foot kept getting banged up during the first half, and he hit the turf a couple of times in the second as he raced the ball downfield against Edinburg North’s tight coverage.

Villines said there was a big rush of relief when Torres finally capitalized on a feed from Salazar to tie the game with 5:56 remaining in regulation. He had confidence that his team could pull off the win, and he did everything he could to help that belief become reality.

“In overtime, the kids were just running their hearts out,” Galvan said. “We tell the kids, ‘They can beat us in soccer but they cannot beat us in hustle.’ They didn’t stop, they knew they had the potential to go to the next round. They believed it and they did it.”

With the clock winding down, Villines hooked a rocket kick into the net and was promptly swarmed by his teammates as the rowdy Hawks fans went wild. Ayden Hernandez and Carlos Hernandez also were standouts among a slew of Hawks who contributed to controlling the game’s tempo and coming out with a hard-fought win.

“I just saw the ball go up and it stayed in, so I thought, ‘I might as well go for it.’ I had to give it my all just in case it goes in, and it went in,” Villines said. “That was amazing, honestly. It felt really nice because we worked really hard for it. I just kept going for (my teammates). Having them around, everyone pushes everyone and it makes us a better team. We were doing really well and we just kept going. It was all heart, honestly. Just our love for the game.”

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