After the first round, the varsity boys soccer team is 1-6 in district play.

“The first round of districts started off kind of slow,” senior Tomas Strauss said. “We weren’t scoring that many goals, but we won our last game against Cedar Ridge.”

The team scored three goals in the first four losses to Pflugerville, Westwood, Round Rock and McNeil.

“The hardest game was probably against McNeil because last year we won against them in our first round but then lost against them in the second round,” Strauss said.  “It’s kind of like they are our new rivalry since we don’t play Leander anymore.”

Despite the losses, the varsity boys bounced back with a victory against Cedar Ridge, Feb. 9, winning 2-1.

“It was a good confidence booster for the team because we had been battling with the other schools in our district so far,” sophomore Rowan Sanford said. “It was just nice to finally get that win in to kind of motivate us to do more.”

In addition, the boys are getting a new feel for what to expect from the other teams that they will be playing against.

“I think now that we know how the other teams play and we can see their film, we are more adapted to how they play,” Sanford said. “So we can shut them down and kind of recover from our mistakes from the first time around.”

The boys wrapped up the first round Tuesday. Diego Pena scored in the second half to make it 2-2, but the Hawks made a late goal to take the win, 3-2. The Raiders start the second round Feb. 19, playing Pflugerville at home at 8 p.m.