By KEVIN ECKLEBERRY

Daily News

The Troup Tigers pushed a strong Central-Phenix City team to overtime on Monday night at Callaway Stadium before falling 3-2.

Central-Phenix City (5-1-2), which is coming off a tournament victory on Saturday, scored a goal with 8:45 remaining to deadlock the score at 2-2, which was the score at the close of regulation.

In the second of the two five-minute overtime periods, Central’s Ahmad Butler scored what turned out to be the winning goal.

The Tigers (1-5) had a couple of scoring chances in the closing moments, but they were unable to produce the tying goal.

Sam West scored both goals for Troup.

Troup lost in overtime to Callaway last week before beating Mount Zion 5-0 for its first win of the season.

Monday’s game featured two equally-matched squads, and Troup head coach Candice Morgan wanted to see what her squad could do in overtime.

“We don’t usually go into overtime, unless it’s region,” Morgan said. “We wanted to play. I wanted to see us finish, but we weren’t able to.”

For Central-Phenix City, the win was another step in the right direction under first-year head coach Dillon Griggs.

“This is my first year being the varsity coach, and we’re kind of in a rebuilding stage right now,” Griggs said. “So I’ve revamped everything we’ve done. We’re just trying to get confidence in the program.”

The go-ahead goal came with 4:16 left in the second overtime period when Butler headed the ball into the net.

The Tigers kept pushing and had some chances to tie it.

With 57 seconds left, Oscar Lopez-Garcia’s shot just missed the left side of the goal, and Troup came up empty on two straight corner kicks after that.

In Monday’s girls’ game, it was all Central-Phenix City, which won 10-0.

Troup’s teams will be back at home on Wednesday against Opelika.