Despite starting the high school soccer season a month later than usual, everything felt the same at Freedom where the Patriots defeated Northampton, 2-1, in a thrilling overtime victory on Sept. 25.

“I thought it was well-delivered, but it felt nice, the final goal, and overall, the team played well. I just feel really happy right now,” said Taher Kitabwalla, who scored the game winner on an assist by Daniel Ramirez. “It was a tough game, both teams were really tough, but we were pushing at the end.”

Neither team scored in the first half, and the Pates made a switch to three in the midfield with Ramirez, Peter Tichy, and Sebastian Garces.

“Northampton was a little more physical than what we were used to in the beginning of the game, and I think it kind of shifted our mentality a little bit,” said Freedom head coach Matt Reightler. ‘Once the second half came, we settled into things a little more and had a lot more possession toward the end of the game and in overtime. It started to click.”

The Konkrete Kids scored first, however, on a goal by Adam Wetherhold, about nine minutes into the second half.

Ten minutes later, Garces took the ball down the middle and got off a shot but missed. Soon after, Tichy tied the game, burying the ball in the top corner.

“The ball came right out on a silver platter. We’ve been waiting for this moment for awhile now,” said Tichy after the game. “In the midfield, we were getting beat a lot, so we needed to be more compact. We switched to three in the middle, and we worked well in there.”

Going into overtime, the Pates talked about their strength as a team and that they would need to pick things up even more than in the second half.

With three minutes remaining, Kitabwalla scored the game-winner.

Freedom goalie Tristan Willey made four saves.

“We held possession well when we tried to,” Coach Reightler said. “It was really nice to see Austin Hoffert back after his injury. He owned that defense today, and if he plays like that, we’re going to give up very few goals this year.”

This past Saturday, Freedom’s defense held Nazareth scoreless in the Patriots’ 1-0 victory over the Blue Eagles at Freedom.

“It’s just doing my job, keeping them away,” said Hoffert. “We worked on marking runners, making sure we got everybody covered and focusing on eight (Alex Marouchoc) and ten (Jakob Braman).”

It was originally thought that Michael Krents scored the winning goal with 4:08 remaining in the game, but it was an own goal that gave Freedom the victory.

“The first time we played them, they played two through balls to their number eight, so we knew we had to man mark that guy,” Krents said. “I feel like we possessed the ball more [today], we were connecting really well, our defense did a lot better, and that’s how we won the game.”

Freedom coach Matt Reightler had made some adjustments at halftime.

“We switched back to our 4-4-2, which I thought gave us a bit more advantage going forward. We dropped Krents a little deeper and had him play a little more defensively,” Coach Reightler said. “The biggest thing I’ll say is the fight from this team doesn’t go away. We know we’re going to keep getting better. We know the goals are eventually going to start to come once things continue to click. They’re still young, but they’re playing very well, and I’m happy.”