KALONA

The moment was memorable.

Jesse Blossom moved toward the middle of the attacking zone and let a shot fly in the second half of Hillcrest Academy’s soccer game Friday against Danville.

Soon, after the ball soared past the arms of Danville goalkeeper Aiden Konig, Blossom, a freshman, sprinted toward his Ravens for a celebration. The goal was just the second of Blossom’s high school career and it broke a 1-1 tie.

Blossom’s goal started an offensive attack by the Ravens that produced four goals in 15 minutes. Jorge Canchola, a senior, scored on a penalty kick with 6:18 left to make it 3-1. Micah Gerber and Grant Bender added goals after that.

“It’s nice to see them not from just one person,” Hillcrest coach Marcus Miller said of the Ravens’ goals.

The victory was the second straight for the Ravens (4-3), whose young lineup includes Blossom and several other freshmen.

“Oh, yeah. Any win is a good win for us,” Miller said. “I started, what, four freshmen, I’ve got three others that played. Yeah, we’re young.”

Diego Ramos, a freshman who leads the Ravens in scoring with seven goals, scored 15 minutes into the second half to tie the score at 1-1 after what can be described as an uncomfortable first half. The only goal of the opening half came on a Danville penalty kick.

“We just didn’t play well at all,” Miller said. “We weren’t making [defensive] traps, we were backing up and giving them way too much space. So we worked on making some of those adjustments. The guys came out and played hard. We talked about the mental part of it.”

“First half was very shaky,” said Hillcrest goalkeeper Aiden Krabill. “But we figured it out. We knew what we had to do and we got it done.”

The Ravens pushed their wing players toward the outside and that strategy resulted in multiple scoring chances.

“We were too congested in the middle, we needed to use the width of the field,” Miller said. “We finally did that in the second half. It’s nice to see when they listen and things work out.”

Krabill had five saves.