Staff photo / Brian Yauger Howland senior Dimitri Gentis, right, and Canfield senior Ryan Dangol battle for the ball during Tuesday’s game in Canfield.

CANFIELD — When it comes to Mahoning Valley high school sports rivalries over the last decade, few, if any, have matched the intensity and gravitas of Howland and Canfield’s soccer games.

Tuesday’s game was another intense chapter in that rivalry. The Cardinals got on the board first, but Howland responded quickly with a pair of goals and avenged their loss earlier in the season with a 2-1 victory in the rematch.

Tigers coach Joe Brefczynski isn’t from the area and wasn’t familiar with the stakes of this series, but his team got the first-year coach prepared for what was to come.

A game like that requires intensity, so Howland gave 80 minutes of it.

“We just said we weren’t going to let off (the gas),” Brefczynski said. “We said coming in that it was going to be high intensity, it was going to be full press, we were going to use our talents and press the whole time through. We stuck to the game plan and were successful with it.”

Despite spending much of the first half defending their own goal from a steady and aggressive Howland attack, it was the Cardinals who struck first.

Set up by sophomore Jared Toporcer, senior striker Drew Snyder scored the game’s first goal in the opening minutes of the second half.

But that goal unleashed Howland’s scoring touch as well, with junior forward George Liakaris connecting with the back of the net just four minutes after Canfield got on the board.

The Tigers struck again near the halfway point of the second half. This time sophomore Grady Hunt was the triggerman, filling the net and giving Howland its first advantage of the night.

That goal went on to be the game-winner as the Cardinals weren’t able to match it. Canfield (10-2, 5-1 AAC) upped its pressure late, but its best shot at knotting the game up was stifled by a diving save from Howland’s Carter Jones.

“We’ve had a little bit of a rollercoaster epidemic, not playing to our potential, as you could see today,” Cardinals coach Phil Simone said. “It’s a talented group, and we’ll bounce back from this and we’ll get back to business.”

With the emotional high of a rivalry win, there’s always the chance of a slip up right after. With the leadership group Howland has, however, Brefczynski expects the same all-gas, no-brakes approach that helped them take down the Cardinals.

“I think the great thing again is just the leadership that I have. We’ve got guys that are legacy players that were here (watching) their brothers win the state championship and family that were in that group,” Brefczynski said. “They want to see it come back to Howland. It’s really community-driven internally from the players. I just get to come along for the ride and give a little bit of direction and provide some strategy, and they put it in place. We get the results we’re looking for based on them alone. ”

Howland (13-1, 5-1 AAC) plays host to Warren G. Harding on Thursday. Canfield also squares off with a league rival on Thursday, traveling up Route 46 to face Austintown Fitch.

Canfield and Howland are tied for first in the All-American Conference, so they are going to have to close the season strong, because both teams will push to win the league crown.

“We’ve got a tough, tough, tough Fitch team on Thursday,” Simone said. “We’ve just got to come back out, we’ve got to get them grounded again, put this one past us and get to the next one.”