Passes don’t get much nicer than this.
And the goal it led to in the 75th minute was pretty good, too, allowing ‘Iolani to tie Kamehameha 1-1 in an ILH girls soccer match at Kozuki Stadium on Wednesday.
Raiders senior Kristen Hori gathered in a loose ball, and immediately delivered a pass into space through two Kamehameha defenders, sending Kylee Kim-Bustillos on a breakaway down the left wing.
Kim-Bustillos, all alone with just goalkeeper Kristin Kawamura to beat, chased the ball down and promptly knocked a left-footed shot into the open, far right corner.
"I told myself, ‘I can’t miss this.’ I had been frustrated and mad at my team; that’s something I need to work on and the coaches have been telling me to calm down," Kim-Bustillos said. "I looked up and saw the goalie come out and saw the back of the net and just kicked it in."
Concerning the tough angle, Kim-Bustillos said she is more comfortable shooting left-footed but has more power with the right.
‘Iolani remained undefeated at 2-0-1 in the league, and the Warriors (2-1-1), who dominated the play in the second half and appeared ready to lock up a win, avoided a second ILH loss. Both are in the title hunt, as usual, with Punahou (3-0).
Previously, in a preseason match, the defending state champion Warriors beat ‘Iolani 4-0.
"You don’t want to tie," Raiders coach Kristin Masunaga said. "But expecting to come out with a win is not realistic. Even though we were missing a lot of players in that preseason loss, it was still a bad loss. So, we’re happy with this tie."
On the tying goal, Hori said her first instinct was to dribble instead of pass.
"I saw her (Kim-Bustillos) running out of the corner of my eye and knew she would be open," said Hori, who has been accepted to Johns Hopkins University, where the coach offered her a place on the Division III soccer team. "Our confidence boosted with this win."
In the 48th minute of the aggressively played match that included lots of hard body contact, the Warriors grabbed a 1-0 lead.
Casey Thompson’s long indirect kick whistled toward the goal in a crowd. Raiders goalkeeper Courtney Overland came out for it, but before she could get to it, Kamehameha’s Emma Young collided with ‘Iolani’s Lauryn Oishi on a jump ball, with Young heading it into the goal and Oishi going down.
After being carted off the field after the head-bumping, Oishi went to the hospital with a concussion, Masunaga said.
"I saw the goalie coming, so I knew I had to beat her to it and fortunately I got to it," said Young, who thought she had collided with Overland. "We possessed the ball in a lot of the game, and one little mistake cost us that goal at the end. It was a nice run by them and a nice finish."
For Kamehameha coach Missy Moore, it was a nice play that tied the game, but also a mistake.
"You can’t let down at any point because it will bite you in the butt," she said before adding that one of the Warriors players did not track back to defend Hori like she was supposed to. "We are playing well and passing well and controlling the play, but we’re not doing much in the front one-third of the field. We’re not putting it in the back of the net."