After a tie to Chanhassen on Sept. 14, boys’ soccer shut out rival Robbinsdale Cooper with a final score of 4-0.

Senior captain Anthony Brandel said while he thought the team’s defense played well, the team can always be improving.

“I think communication could be a little better and then just I think the team atmosphere, we should be a little nicer to the guys, be a little more positive,” Brandel said.

Sophomore Nick Riley said he also sees areas in which the team could improve, but he is proud of the team’s performance.

“(Our performance) was really good, we scored a lot of goals, that’s what you need to do in the game,” Riley said. “We could have scored more, but it was a good game.”

Assistant Varsity coach Pat Hartman said he was glad this game allowed the team to involve new players they hadn’t been able to earlier in the season.

“It was a good opportunity to get all the players in,” Hartman said. “We had a a couple kids coming back from injury, so it was kind of nice to have an opponent that allowed us to bring some kids in that were injured.”

Junior Sam Diamond said the results of this game were much better than recent games this year.

“In the other games we kind of lost track in the middle of the games and people gave up and this game we were making a lot of subs so everyone was fresh,” Diamond said.

Hartman said incorporating many substitutions allows every player to showcase their best abilities.

“When we sub in players, we don’t lose any quality. The whole bench is just as good as the whole starting lineup,” Hartman said.

According to Brandel, one of the biggest challenges of facing Cooper was facing opponents physically one-on-one.

“The guys were pretty big, so it was hard to go body-to-body with (the other team), but I think we did pretty well,” Brandel said.

Diamond said the team could also work on keeping a positive attitude during games and trying to reduce the amount of yellow cards received.

“(We could improve our) attitudes, we get a lot of yellow cards and just in games like this, keeping composure and not swearing (is something we can work on),” Diamond said.

The next game will take place at 3 p.m. Sep. 23 at Cretin-Derham Hall High School.