An explosive opening half hour was enough to see the Desert Vista Thunder through to the quarter finals with a 4-0 victory against a youthful Highland Hawks side.

Relying on their backup goalkeeper, Highland proved unable to deal with rebounds in their own penalty area.

“We just were so uncharacteristic in that first half,” Highland coach Tim Barmettler said. “That hasn’t been us since the very first game of the season where we were struggling.”

Three of the goals came from set pieces, with Colin Birnbaum, Micah Vasey and Nolan Billeter each finding themselves burying a loose ball from close range.

Vasey added his second from open play, once again cleaning up a rebounded ball after a quick Desert Vista counter attack.

“I think that early, my motivation [after taking the 4-0 lead] was ‘let’s continue to work, let’s continue to work,'” Desert Vista coach Trent Elliott said. “I didn’t want us to become complacent, to lose our energy, because your energy drops off, they score a goal, they’re right back in it.”

However, the second half instead turned into a much more even affair, with true chances few and far between for either side.

For the visitors’ coach, regaining their composure for the final 40 minutes was a positive sign for his inexperienced side.

“We’re very young,” Barmettler said. “We have one senior that actually played last year. Most of our juniors hadn’t been in any of the games last year either, so I was really happy with our season. We really learned a lot. We got much better.

“The first half looked like a bunch of scared sophomores playing, and the second half, we looked like what we’ve been doing and beating teams. Even though it was 0-0 for the second half, we just played better. We were nervous. It’s a good learning experience for the young guys, and hopefully we can learn from it and be a little bit more seasoned next year when we get into big games.”

For the Thunder, they will travel to face top-seeded San Luis on Saturday.

“I think that we’ve proven this year we can play with anybody in the state,” Elliott said. “I don’t think our seed says anything about what we’re capable of doing, so if we have to travel down there and play the number one seed, I think we’re going to show up and we’ll see how the result turns out.”

A photo album from the match is available here.