To understand the magic of Highland’s scoring attack, you have to watch closely. If you blink, you run the risk of missing the show, the way the Rams collect goals like trading cards. Sometimes Abby Satterfield chips in shots at the net. Other times Tambree Bell boots them in. Highland has so many scoring threats that on the rare occasion one is off, several others can fill in.

In the Rams’ 5-1 win over Madison Tuesday night, good for a 5A District 5/6 tournament crown and a third-straight appearance at the 5A state tournament, they worked together to put on a performance better suited for Broadway. Satterfield tallied two goals, Bell scored one, Taegen McCulloch added one and thanks to an own goal, Highland put this one away before it really had a chance to start. Before the match turned 10 minutes old, Satterfield and Bell scored, and the Rams never had trouble.

“I think that they had that mindset,” Highland coach Savannah Rose said, “that if we score early, we’re gonna feel more comfortable when we play the rest of the game. So it definitely loosens us up as a team and allows us to do what we do best, move the ball around and get it to the top.”

This Highland team’s story is anything but boring. In Rose’s first year as head coach, the Rams completed a 11-3 regular season, which included wins that might make you raise your eyebrows — like their 2-1 win over Rocky Mountain back in August — and results that might make you furrow them in confusion, like a 1-1 draw against Canyon Ridge three weeks later.

Mostly, though, Highland has singed opponents like matches. Headed into the state tournament, the Rams have won seven of their past eight, their only blemish a 3-0 loss to Thunder Ridge. In the district tournament, they blanked Rigby, 5-0, to earn the chance to route Madison in another blowout. Highland may not be a machine, but a good mechanic could put the parts together.

“I feel like Madison definitely comes out hard every time they play us,” senior defender Evee Stodard said, “so we had to come out harder.”

“We just played our hearts out,” Bell said. “We showed up the first 20 minutes and put five goals in the back of the net.”

That much was obvious to anyone watching. What’s harder to notice is how the Rams put themselves in positions to score like this. That happened back in late September, after Highland secured a 4-1 win over Madison in the teams’ first meeting of the season. Rose liked her team’s outing. She can’t complain about wins too much.

“But we kinda wanted to see how much more dynamic we can make the team,” Rose said, “and if there are other formations we can kinda lean on. Then when we found it, we were like, well, this is definitely a very dangerous one for us.”

That formation was a 4-3-3 arrangement, but really, the key was this: It put Bell, Satterfield and freshman Caitlin Staats — the team’s most dangerous goal-scorers — on the field at once. The Rams’ results going forward: 4-0 win over Century, 3-0 loss to Thunder Ridge, 2-1 win over Rigby, then these two victories in the district tournament.

“So we continued (using it) going forward,” Rose said. “It kinda helped get other players into it and highlighted other players and positions that they looked good in.”

That has helped Highland return to state for the third straight year — in Rose’s first. If that sounds impressive, it should, but she explains the development like this: “They came hungry. This is a great group for it. They’re competitive, they’re hungry.” She hasn’t needed to make wholesale changes, she says, only adjustments to formations and positions.

“I feel like I didn’t quite have to steer the ship,” Rose said. “I can kinda put it on cruise control and figure out what things I can fix along the way, what things we need to adjust, and how we can respond to things that don’t go our way. And we definitely had games this season that didn’t go our way, but making it so that we learned something from it has kind of been my goal now.”

The Rams’ other goal is obvious: Make a deep run at state. Last fall, they entered the 5A state tournament with the bracket’s top seed, but they headed back to Pocatello with a fourth-place finish. They already feel confident they can improve on that. They topped a Boise-area team. They enjoy working with Rose. And they’ve developed a habit they can’t kick: Scoring.

“I think that this is kind of a continuation of how much they’ve worked on throughout the years,” Rose said. “Obviously, last year, they had the same success, and the year before that. So I think this is kinda continuing on that success and creating a tradition, and a mindset that carries forward throughout the next groups that come through. And this is just holding to that for us.”