Lynnwood’s defense ahead of its offense

The Lynnwood boys soccer team hasn’t won a game so far in 2008.

But the lack of victories hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of new coach Mark Heberlein.

The Royals are continuing to make progress and Heberlein is looking forward to the second half of the season when Lynnwood will get rematches against the rest of the Western Conference South Division.

“Our defense has been getting better and better,” said Heberlein, who also coaches the Royals’ junior varsity girls soccer team. “We’re working on trying to put balls in the net. We’ve got some great guys on the team. We just need to finish. That’s all.”

Lynnwood has been shut out six times in eight games, including a 6-0 loss to Shorecrest on March 31 at Shoreline Stadium. The Royals definitely played better in the second half after allowing five goals in the first 40 minutes.

“The first half we had some mistakes and we adjusted,” Heberlein said. “The second half was a much better half. They scored on us but it was only one goal.”

The major adjustment Lynnwood made was switching a couple of players to different positions.

“We played more aggressively, played better positioning,” Heberlein added. “We just straight up covered better.”

The Royals returned only a handful of players from last year’s squad. Standouts include sophomore goalkeeper Emiliano Suarez, junior Amandeep Singh and senior Hugo Martirena.

“We have a bunch of new guys, not necessarily freshmen but guys that came out,” Heberlein said.

The talent level of the new players is high and Heberlein hopes they will continue to improve.

The goals for Lynnwood are to be a “better team than when we started out and that we’ve learned how to work as a team better, how to communicate and how to put together passes and shots and how to prevent goals,” Heberlein said. “We’re definitely halfway there.”