For any high school athlete, playing varsity is the ultimate goal. For most, it takes until junior year to reach this goal. You play on the freshman team your freshman year, junior varsity your sophomore year, and then finally as an upperclassman you enter the spotlight of varsity.

This year, however, the boys’ soccer team will not be following this plan. In fact, there are ten sophomores that make up for just under half of the varsity squad this year. With nine seniors and just two juniors, sophomores lead the team in numbers.

Sophomore Jake Sieber explains “It’s definitely a little harder playing against guys that are bigger, faster and stronger, but in the games the sophomores on our team rarely hurt us any more than the juniors and seniors do. The sophomores on our team are able to keep up with and exceed abilities of most upperclassmen on other teams.”

The question had to be asked: with such a young team do the Thunder have a real chance at making playoffs and going far? The coaches believe they do, and the play of this varsity team has backed up their confidence.

So far undefeated in league, the boys have not had a goal scored on them en route to victories over Granite Bay and Nevada Union. The thunder tied Folsom 0-0, who had previously had a streak of over 30 wins and no losses or ties. This streak was snapped by Rocklin who tied them on January second.

With eight wins, three ties, and only one loss as of January 15, the ten sophomores on the team are proving their worth.

Another one of the sophomores, Sohail Rahel, shares the same confidence in the team as the coaches. “I firmly believe that we will win the section championship. Our team has a lot of talent and if we use that to its full extent I definitely believe we will win the section title.”

With such a  young team, the future looks bright for the boys soccer program and big things seem to be in the works for this year and on. The ten sophomores will look to lead on for the next two years.