Local Sports

HHS sophomore Kiess helped Spartans advance to state quarterfinals

There were a handful of times this past Tuesday when Hughesville sophomore Jaysa Keiss had a look at the goal against District 3 champion Camp Hill in the PIAA Class A playoffs.

In the first half, she got inside of the 18 and rifles a shot that got blocked by a defender. And she had a chance with less than two minutes until halftime.

The sophomore got a loose ball off a sliding blocked shot inside the 18 and tapped it, only to see it bounce off the crossbar and come shy of scoring.

But it wasn't the goals Kiess didn't put in that made a different on Tuesday. It was what she did when she had the ball at her feet with her vision.

Hughesville scored four goals in the 4-1 win against Camp Hill in Tuesday's state opener on a chilly night, and Kiess assisted on all four goals, twice dishing a pass to Kat Temple and twice finding Tori Morgan.

"She's always our spark player," Morgan said. "She never has a bad game energy wise. Playing wise? She's always up with everyone."

Everyone would love to have a goal in a state playoff win, but dishing out four key assists? That's a pretty good performance, too.

Keiss found Temple with 13:26 to play in the first half to give the Spartans a 1-0 lead they held until halftime. Camp Hill scored nine minutes into the second half when Bekah Mulvihill fired a shot for a 1-1 tie.

But Kiess and her teammates kept pressing and Keiss delivered time and time again. The sophomore found Temple for a goal wtih 8:39 to play to give the Spartans a 2-1 lead as Hughesville never relented it.

She then found Morgan twice in the final six minutes of the game for a 3-1 and 4-1 lead to seal the game.

"She has such an ability to pick her head up and look," Morgan said. "She always puts us first before herself and had an amazing game with four assists."

Keiss entered Tuesday's game with just two assists this season. But she delivered her best game of her young career by having four and helping her teammates excel.

"Jaysa had a fantastic game. She missed two dinks, one she could have just placed and the other she played it right to the keeper on that breakaway," Hughesville coach Cody Hack said. "For her to have something like that, another opportunity and not be selfish to get her own goal and lay that ball off to Tori? A great touch by Tori, we've been looking for that all year too."

That unselfish play never went unnoticed, and her teammates are glad she had great vision to dish out those four assists in a huge historic win for the Spartan program.

"Very unselfish play by Jaysa, and I'm very proud of her for that," Hack said.

And there's a lot of Hughesville fans proud of Kiess for her performance on Tuesday.