Photo by Kim North St. Clairsville's Parker Galloway scored a hat trick Tuesday night against Harrison Central.

CADIZ — St. Clairsville entered Tuesday night’s boys’ soccer game against Harrison Central riding a three-game winless streak – two losses and a tie. That’s out of the norm of what recent seasons have produced.

However, the Red Devils (3-2-2) tickled the twine on three of their first four shots on the artificial pitch at misty Wagner Field, and then held off the feisty Huskies (1-4) in the second half for a 5-2 victory.

“That was a great blessing,” St. Clairsville head coach Jeff Roberts said of the early outburst. “There were some pretty goals, too.”

Parker Galloway, a transfer from Indian Valley, netted two quick goals, the first off a nifty feed from Maddox Tennar late in the second minute. The second came 11 minutes later when Jayson Clark pushed the ball ahead and behind the Huskies’ defense.

The promising freshman completed his hat trick by stealing a Harrison Central pass deep in Huskies territory and beating goalkeeper Jaydis Yoho for a 5-1 reading.

“Parker had a hat trick and, overall, I thought we possessed the ball really well,” Roberts added. “We played pretty well with the exception of letting them score that late goal.”

He was referring to Lorenzo Chiarpotto’s unassisted net-finder late in the 79th minute. In fact, that was the only goal credited to the Huskies as the first was inadvertently knocked into the net by a St. Clairsville player for an own-goal.

Other than that, freshman Talen Rice stood tall between the pipes. He came up really big when he denied Harrison Central’s Lunis Hildebrant with a diving one-hand deflection from point-blank range, and then smothered the rebound. Rice finished with eight saves.

“I put Talen in goal for his first varsity start and he came up big a couple of times,” Roberts said. “We are just exploring some options on what is best for the team and Talen came in and stepped up. There were a couple of shots that were going in, but he came up big.”

Clark made it 3-0 in the 16th minute off a feed from Tyler Harris. Clark split a pair of Huskie defenders down the middle of the box before launching a laser along the turf that got past Yoho.

“We dug ourselves a hole at 3-0, but we had a couple of opportunities to score,” Harrison Central head coach Derek Gramlich said. “We had a point-blank shot but their goalkeeper came up with a huge save on. On any other day, that goes in.”

Yoho, who also stood on his head at times, recorded half-a-dozen saves.

St. Clairsville travels to Harding Stadium to meet Steubenville on Thursday. Harrison Central, meanwhile, heads to Oak Glen the same night.