Both the boys and girls varsity soccer teams will advance to Regional quarterfinals after each team won their Area matches on Thursday, April 6. The boys will play Houston Math Science & Tech tomorrow at Delmar Stadium at 7 p.m., and the girls match against Katy is to be announced.

The two varsity teams trained for a long time before they could finally make it to this round of playoffs. They had to get used to playing in certain weathers to be able to play their best in critical moments.

“We started training in off-season last year,” senior Madeleine Gallagher said. “It helps being in the heat because whenever it gets to fourth and fifth round it’s really hot. Around November, we started practicing after school and we just trained really hard every time, and we condition a lot.”

With hours of practice and after school games, soccer tends to take up a lot of the players’ time. In that time they have to put aside their differences and learn to play as a team.

“With a big team, with a whole bunch of girls like this, being in high school, of course you’re going to have problems throughout the season, but each time something came up it just made us stronger as the season progressed, so right now we’re really close and we’re hoping that our relationship as a team will push us further into playoffs,” senior Kristen Hutar said.

The girls varsity team made it to state last year, but the current team is not letting that distract them. They are planning to focus on every game and keep looking forward.

“We did really well last year, but last year is last year and we hope to take each game at a time and just do our best and continue to progress,” senior Taryn Siegele said. “Hopefully we’ll do better than last year and make it to the state finals.”

The Lady Cougars remain as strong as last year as they remain undefeated this season. On the boys team, junior Donovan Smith smashed a seven year school record for the number of goals made in a single season.

“At the beginning of the season I set [the record] as my goal, and then throughout the season, I really tried hard to get to it,” Smith said. “Throughout the season I was starting to get frustrated because I couldn’t get to it, so I’m actually really glad I could finally achieve what I wanted at the beginning of the season.”