After losing fourteen varsity players, the boys soccer team is looking to improve on last season’s 8-7-1 record followed by a second round playoff loss to Northwest. The team will be led by captains Mark Cameron, Yuta Nakagawa and Spencer Meschter. The team is looking for strong play up front from forward Luke Barber and attacking midfielder Oliver Petermann. Defenders Nakagawa, Edward Smith, Jorge Richardson and Sam Pearl-Schwartz will anchor the back line with Cameron in goal.

After losing five players to club team conflicts and graduating nine seniors, the captains are looking for strength in the fresh talent and few returning players.

“Players who need to step up in the midfield are seniors Meschter, Andrew Wagman, and Grant Miller,” Cameron said. “Our team is really young, including three freshmen and four sophomores.”

With a dramatically different roster, strengthening the team dynamic will be the key to success this season, Smith said.

“This year we have no one star player, just a bunch of really good players,” Smith said. “We are relying this year on team chemistry more than anything, something that was lacking in previous years.”

With the change in personnel, the team has switched its formation from two players in the center midfield to 3. This setup provides the basis for the team’s strategy: flooding the midfield and counterattacking.

All of these changes will be put to the test throughout the season, specifically against rivals Churchill on Oct. 3, Walter Johnson on Oct. 10 and B-CC on Oct. 17. Last year, Walter Johnson went nearly undefeated, and Churchill and B-CC have a lot of returning players to watch out for, Meschter said.

“We definitely will be a challenge for them. I think we stacked up well to them during the preseason and we’ve only gotten better since then,” he said.

The team has its post-season expectations set high, with the ultimate goal to win a state championship.

“We will win the same way with all of our competitors,” Richardson said, “by working harder and playing smarter than they do. Just the effort itself can help us win playoffs.”

After beating Baltimore’s Mt. St. Joseph’s 3-1 in a friendly match Sept. 1, the Vikings look to win their first county game Wed. Sept. 5 at Rockville.

Prior to the start of the regular season, Cameron had a warning for the opposition. “Teams we play better watch out for the Yuta slide…that’s all I’m going to say.”