Buckingham County High School’s varsity boys soccer team has not been accustomed to much success in recent years, but the Knights have orchestrated a distinctly winning season this year. Following a 2-2 tie to visiting Bluestone High School on Wednesday, Buckingham entered its rematch with the Barons on Thursday with an 8-3-2 overall record.

“It would be an understatement to say that I’m pleased with it, because honestly going into this year, I really didn’t know what we had,” Knights Head Coach Brett Whittington said Wednesday. “… These kids have really, they just play hard; they just fight and they scrap. Tonight was a perfect example. We were 0-0 at halftime. They went up, we came back. They went up again, we came back late, got a late goal with I think less than three minutes left to tie the game up, and they just kept fighting, kept fighting. And that says a lot about why we’re where we are, just the way they don’t give up. And that’s the biggest difference I can see.”

He made clear that he did not mean this as a criticism of previous Buckingham teams but rather as a testament to how the team has grown, now possessing more confidence at the end of games, regardless of the score.

“I don’t want to say previous teams would give up, but we still feel like we have a chance, whereas before maybe we didn’t throughout the lineup, but I think everybody on the team feels like we’ve still got a chance even late in a game.”