Who could blame the Person girls’ soccer team for showing elation after earning a hard-fought 1-0 Piedmont Athletic Conference victory over the Southern Durham Spartans Thursday evening at Rocket Stadium?

The Rockets, now 4-12 overall and 2-9 in the conference, had struggled to compete in the PAC-6 all season, suffering a number of one-sided losses. But on Thursday they exacted a measure of revenge for an earlier one-goal loss to Southern.

“It’s good to get the win,” said a smiling Person head coach Doug McNeill afterwards. “I knew we could do it if we got our offense going.”

The players even marked the celebration by dousing the coach with water after the game.

Diana Gonzalez broke a scoreless tie with just under 15 minutes left in the contest when she dribbled through the Spartan defense and rolled a shot into an open net.

From there, the Rockets were able to hold off the Spartans, who put some testers on Person’s second-half goalie Amber Bumphus, who had missed some games due to eye surgery, according to Coach McNeill.

Bumphus came up big on several occasions to prevent Southern from denting the net. Laura Clayton was the first-half goalie for Person.

The storyline was not as positive in Wednesday’s 4-0 loss to Northern Durham, where the Rockets allowed 21 shots on goal.

Bumphus (seven saves) and Clayton (10 stops) played well to keep Person in the game.

Alana Alford scored twice, while Devin Norwood and Lindsey Richards had the other tallies for the Knights, who had the edge in corner kicks, 3-1.

The Rockets missed the presence of Gonzalez, who was sick and did not play in Wednesday’s game.

Person struggled to get any threatening shots on goal. Its best chances came when Tori Whitfield launched a free kick wide of the goal and Rebekah Ashcraft broke through but couldn’t get off a shot.

Through the first 20 minutes of the second half, the Rockets had the territorial edge over the visitors but could not put sustained pressure on the Northern net.

The Person defense also performed very well at times, led by Janine Bradsher, Brittani McNeill and Rachael Ward.

Person resumes action on Thursday at Riverside, and then hostsJordanon Monday, April 28.