Staff photo / Brian Yauger Hubbard wingback AJ Gulu, right, moves into position to block out Howland’s Jet Hua. The Eagles lost their season-opening contest, 4-0, to the defending state champions.

HOWLAND — The Hubbard boys soccer team kicked its season off with arguably its toughest opponent on the schedule. While going tit-for-tat for a while and trading shots with the reigning Division II state champions, Hubbard eventually gave way to Howland as the Tigers scored three second half goals and beat the Eagles, 4-0, in both teams’ season openers.

“It’s always exciting to be back,” Eagles coach Cory Reinard said. “Always exciting for our first game, especially since we’re playing Howland. We love the tough games right off the bat, and Howland is, especially this year, as tough as they come.”

Neither team was able to break the 0-0 deadlock despite multiple chances. Howland’s goalkeeper Zachary Lewis and Hubbard’s goalkeeper Kaden Clay each made outstanding saves despite the constant pressure.

Eventually, Howland’s Dylan DiPiero was able to break the tie, sneaking the ball past Clay to get on the board.

Clay held strong while facing a peppering from the Tiger forwards, and kept the deficit to a single goal for the remainder of the first half.

After the game, Reinard praised the team’s patience.

“I thought we were patient in a lot of areas, especially the first half,” Reinard said. “We were patient defensively. Patient offensively. Being able to pull them and get some open space to move the ball. We definitely need to work on a little bit more control on that first ball or even that second ball, and then defensively, getting more guys around to put pressure on.

We just left too much space for them to clean out and they manipulated it and got forward on us and opened us up.”

Once Howland was able to open up the Eagle defense, momentum really started to favor the team in orange.

Everything started clicking for the Tigers around the midway point of the second half, when junior Jak Kenney scored off a bicycle kick to put Howland up 2-0.

“We actually started off really well,” Reinard said. “I thought we played very well and stayed in the game. They played very well and put a lot of pressure on us. I thought that the game was going really well, we made some tactical changes going into the second half, but things opened up. They got that second goal, third goal and things really opened up and they put a lot more pressure on us.”

DiPiero and Kylan Mowatt-Larssen tacked on the last two goals to extend the Tiger lead.

Howland (1-0) continues its regular season unbeaten streak that dates back to October of 2018, last losing to Fitch. That season, Hubbard beat the Tigers in the district finals. After that loss, Howland went to two straight state finals, winning in 2020.

This year’s Howland team is looking much different than the title-winning Tigers of 2020, but there’s five returning starters from last year including Mowatt-Larssen and Kenney.

“We had a really good JV team too,” Tigers coach Brian Stiles said of last year’s Tigers. “We’ve got a lot of guys playing their first varsity match. I know at times it’s gonna be a little sluggish, but we know, ultimately, we’re going to get there. It just might take some time.”

Up next for the Tigers is Fitch and then they close out the month of August with Canfield.

Hubbard has its home opener on Thursday against West Branch and travels to Fitch to close out its August slate of games.