Harrisburg On Road Again, Look for Victory Repeat Against Blast Saturday

Harrisburg soundly defeated the Baltimore Blast in their last matchup on December 30.

The Harrisburg Heat, coming off of a disappointing loss to Syracuse last weekend are looking to keep the energy alive when they take on the Blast Saturday. Their last face off resulted in the biggest win Harrisburg has seen this year when they soundly defeated the Blast for the first time in 14 years.

“The teams are well-matched,”said Defender Brad Kerstetter of the next match up against the Blast. “They have a strong offense, but we are equally-strong in our defense. We’re ready for this.”

Unfortunately that strong defense wasn’t enough last week against the Silver Knights. Early errors allowed Syracuse to get ahead and prevented the Heat from being able to overcome the deficit, losing 11-7.

“We’ve got a real depth of scoring,” Coach Denison Cabra, also a former Blast player and Hall of Famer, has said. “We would rather have many players scoring than have to focus on one star player.” To that point, the Heat last week saw scores from top scorers Gonzaga and Carvalho, but also saw goals from Tom Mellor, David Mellor, Ebanks and Neto.

With Baltimore putting Donatelli on the field, leading the the team in goals alongside Dantas and Roque who are also scoring threats, the Heat will need to focus hard to prevent getting behind. Heat defensive strongholds like Basso, second in the MASL for blocks, will have to be on guard.

The Heat came out on top against the Blast once, and the potential is there again. Although the Blast defense has only been allowing on average 3.3 goals per game this season, the Heat crushed that average when they won December 30, 7-4. The key will be to come together and get ahead early in the game.

“If there’s one single element that helped us get the win against Baltimore it’s that we came together a lot,” said Team Captain Basso.

You could feel the energy that night, and despite being at Royal Farm Arena this week, the Heat is looking to set the place on fire and post another win.