The Irvine Valley men's soccer team was riding a five-match win streak heading into its big contest with the No. 2-ranked squad in the nation, Taft.
It is not six straight victories for the Lasers, but six still unbeaten.
Irvine Valley fought hard, played inspired soccer all afternoon and tied Taft, 2-2, on Friday at home.
"From the first whistle of the game, this was played at a real high intensity," Irvine Valley coach Conor Ward said. "Both teams were going at each other and it didn't let off for the whole 90 minutes. The level of play was so high."
It was high ferocity, quality play all match long from both sides.
The Lasers (5-3-1) fell behind early on a goal by Taft's Carlos Lopez on a header off a cross from Aldo Pantoja that just went over the reach of IVC freshman goalie Tygo Steenvoorden.
The half ended with the Cougars (4-2-1) ahead, 1-0.
But Irvine Valley stepped it up in the second half and controlled action.
The Lasers tied the game in the 55th minute with a goal by freshman forward Jefreyn Contreras. He received a pass from freshman forward Christopher Camarena and hit a ball that was deflected by a defender and found the right corner past Taft keeper Jaime Ticareno.
The Lasers continued to attack. Freshman forward Grant Miller and Contreras each had opportunities to score in the following minutes, but Ticareno made saves, including a diving one on Contreras' offering.
With just under two minutes left, Irvine Valley found a counter play for a lead.
The ball went to sophomore midfielder Julian Svoboda on the left side and he immediately sent a perfect pass across the field to the feet of freshman midfielder Jacob Edwards.
Edwards immediately pushed forward, took on a defender and then smashed a shot at a tough angle and beat the Taft keeper far post.
Irvine Valley led, 2-1, and had to hold on for five more minutes (three minutes extra time) to pull off the win.
But Taft came back, earned free kicks and scored on one of them, two minutes into extra time.
A free kick by Brian Trujillo went off Steenvoorden and Gabriel Soto knocked the ball in to an open goal.
The whistle blew shortly after.
"We battled to come back and go up, 2-1, and it was a great goal (by Jacob), and then to concede a goal was tough," Ward said. "But we start conference against Santa Ana on Tuesday and need to move on to that. We have lots of positives to take into the conference season."
Irvine Valley takes on rival Santa Ana at home next Tuesday on the main field at 3 p.m.
