Chasing teams in the standings in the final two weeks of the regular season, Newtown High School’s boys’ soccer team picked up a pair of crucial wins — defeating visiting Joel Barlow of Redding on October 8 and host Immaculate of Danbury two days later.

Newtown won both contests by 2-1 scores and, in doing so, earned six points and bolstered its South-West Conference playoff chances. Heading into the game against Barlow, the Nighthawks had eight points and was on the outside of the eight-team playoff picture, looking in. Heading into the clash with Immaculate, both teams, along with Notre Dame-Fairfield, were locked in a three-way tie for ninth place in the conference. Following its last two wins, Newtown has 14 points and is in the thick of things as teams try to lock down one of those tournament spots.

“We’re excited to get the points,” said Newtown Coach Brian Neumeyer, who would have preferred his team earn them a little more easily, but is hopeful there is a payoff for the pressure-filled success. The wins over both Barlow and Immaculate were nail-biters, with the Nighthawks breaking a 1-1 tie in the second half each time.

Newtown trailed Immaculate 1-0 at halftime and bounced back with goals by Gentian Limani — on a penalty kick — and Clay Gattey, who got behind the defense and poked a low shot past Immaculate’s charging goalkeeper.

Newtown goalkeeper Zachary Laros, a transfer from Immaculate who had to sit out the first several games because of transfer rules, was in net for each of the last two victories. He surrendered an early goal on what Neumeyer described as a blunder, but redeemed himself with a pair of late saves — one with a leaping effort with 6:30 left in regulation and the other by aggressively racing out to slide and block a shot with about 2:30 to go.

“It was a little nerve-racking to be honest,” Laros said of going back to Immaculate to face his former team. The goalkeeper added that he was appreciative of the efforts of his captains, Limani and Gattey, coming through.

After falling behind, the Nighthawks kept plugging away and fought hard to earn consecutive victories for the first time this fall.

“The guys responded. This group is responding right now to adversity,” Neumeyer said. “Maybe this character building is going to help us in the long run.”

Newtown improved to 4-4-2 in conference play and 5-4-2 overall, and has three more SWC matchups before another game with Barlow, which is designated as a nonconference battle. In the first game with Barlow, at Blue & Gold Stadium, Albert Dean and Gattey netted shots as the Nighthawks defeated a Falcon team which is ahead of them in the standings and went into action on October 10 with 15 conference points, sitting in fourth-place.

Still on the slate for the Hawks are an October 14 home game with Stratford (7 pm at Blue & Gold Stadium), and October 17 and 20 visits to Kolbe Cathedral of Bridgeport and Notre Dame-Fairfield, respectively. Then comes the Barlow rematch, in Redding, on October 22. Stratford had 13 points and held the seventh spot heading into games on October 10. Kolbe has just one point and sits in the basement.

There is a lot of parity in the conference with a dozen of the conference’s 14 teams having a legitimate shot of qualifying for the SWC playoffs and few or no points separating several squads in the standings. First-place New Milford went into its final four SWC games with 25 points. The next closest teams, Weston and Brookfield, both had 17 points; Barlow and Pomperaug of Southbury each had 15; New Fairfield had 14; Bethel had 13 and held the eighth spot because of a head-to-head tiebreaker with Stratford; and Masuk of Monroe, with ten points, remained on the heels of Newtown, Notre Dame, and Immaculate.