Soccer season is unrolling at a rapid pace for the Howe Sound Secondary school's senior boys soccer team.
The Sounders play around two games a week and are at three wins and one loss.
"The games are back to back," said head coach Pepsi Takhar.
"It's going to be a challenging year because the league is very competitive," he said. "We have to be really prepared mentally."
The Sounders, part of the North Shore district, won their first game against Rockridge 2-1.
The next game was against their biggest rivals, Seycove from North Vancouver.
"It was a really close game," Takhar said.
With around six minutes in the game left, Kabir Takhar dribbled around two players and was fouled, leading to a penalty shot. He scored with the shot.
At a minute left in the game, Seycove had a penalty shot and tied up the game, forcing a shootout.
"We scored four of our shots and Seycove scored three," Takhar said, crediting goalkeeper Sam Dunkley for a strong performance.
He said the Sounders defence, Patrick McKechnie, Joe Heywood, Pirimin McPhee and Jeremy Galley, had a strong performance as well.
He refers to Seycove as the Sounders' biggest rival because they have been knocking each other out of the provincials for years.
"It's always a great pleasure to beat them," Takhar said.
Game three was against Colling-wood from West Vancouver. Collingwood scored first, and Kabir Takhar tied up the game to make it 1-1.
"In the second half, McPhee gave the Sounders the lead," Takhar said.
But the lead was short lived."With 15 minutes left we had a relapse in defence, and they tied it up 2-2," Takhar said.
The game went to a penalty shootout, and all the Sounders scored, while goalkeeper Dunkley saved one of the Collingwood kicks.
The success ended there though. The Sounders lost on Oct. 4 to West Vancouver Secondary school.
"The Sounders dominated the majority of the game, but gave up a goal on a bad bounce early in the game," Takhar said. "We just couldn't score."
Goal scoring is a challenge for the team.
"We're having problems scoring goals throughout the four games," Takhar said. "We don't have an out-and-out striker.
"This team has quite a ways to go to get to a championship level. We have to raise our games to the next level in the coming weeks."
But Takhar said the chances of getting to the provincials are good.
The double A team has won two provincial championships, in the first in 1999, the second in 2000 and one third place finish in the seven years Takhar has been coaching the team. It also won the North Shore league high school title in 2001
