NILES — A pair of Willow Brawley goals lifted Niles to a record-breaking performance in the opening round of the Division 2 district soccer tournament last Thursday.

Brawley’s back-to-back goals in the opening five minutes of the state tournament match against visiting Edwardsburg lifted the Vikings to a 2-1 win over the Eddies, a win that snapped at least a 20-year losing streak in the opening round of district play.

Nobody associated with the Niles soccer program could actually remember when the last district victory came.

“That was a good record to break then, I guess,” said Niles coach Abel Fonseca.

Regardless of when, breaking the streak was a huge step for the program, which struggled throughout much of the season playing a schedule that featured some of southwest Michigan’s top programs.

Niles improved to 6-11-1 overall and will now travel to St. Joseph (11-3-2) to take on the Division 2 district hosts Bears at 6:30 p.m. today.

One of those 11 losses came back in early April at the hands of Edwardsburg (5-3) on the same field.

Niles was looking forward to the rematch since the district pairings were announced, and on Thursday, the Vikings were ready.

From the start, Niles went on the offensive and pressured the Eddies’ defense and goalkeeper Gracie Wilson, who faced six shots, most of them in the opening barrage. She finished with six saves.

Brawley beat the Edwardsburg defense on a pass from Amaya Jacobs to make it 1-0 Vikings just three minutes into the match.

Brawley’s second, and match-winning goal, came less than two minutes later when Taylor Haboush found her on a cross to make it 2-0 with just 4:04 gone off the clock.

“We wanted to come out strong and make a statement,” Fonseca said. “I told them if we come out and jump on them right away, then I would see how they were playing and what we could do.”

Edwardsburg seemed to settle down after that, but was never really able to mount much of an offensive challenge to the Vikings for the remaining 16 minutes of the first half.

Things changed after halftime for the Eddies.

Niles struggled to create any serious offensive challenges, while the Eddies played a majority of the second half in the Vikings’ end of the field.

Finally, with 27:52 remaining in the match, Edwardsburg’s Jodee Lambert got the Eddies on the scoreboard.

From that point on Edwardsburg pressured the Niles defense and goalkeeper Skylar Brawley as they tried to tie the match.

Skylar Brawley was up to the challenge as she turned away 12 of the Eddies’ 13 shots on goal.

Niles also did a good job marking Edwardsburg’s Hannah Coles, who scored three of the five goals in the regular season win for the Eddies.

Marrisa Kerr was given the challenge of marking Coles.

“Marissa was phenomenal marking up Hannah Coles who is a very strong offensive player for the Eddies,” Fonseca said. “We were able to play 10 versus 10 and I thought we did a phenomenal job sticking to the game plan.”

Edwardsburg coach Sean Jesse knows that once his team was behind, it was going to be difficult to catch up with Niles, who he said did a very good job of disrupting the Eddies’ offensive attacks.

“Their No. 8 (Grace Florkowski) did a really good job in the center of the pitch just being disruptive,” he said. “Their whole team did a good job.”