By Craig Juer -- Daily Staff Writer

WINCHESTER — The players took their seats in Cosmo Balio's classroom and wrote down, as he bade them, their team and individual goals for the upcoming season. When he collected the papers, Handley's soccer coach saw that he and his team were not on the same page.

"They wanted to beat Sherando. That was the only thing that they had," he recalled. "I got real nervous with that because I thought all the energy would go into just those two games. And I said, 'OK, you don't want to beat Millbrook? And you really don't care about Brentsville?'"

Handley's seniors had been 1-3 against the Warriors in their first two seasons, and in 2007 had lost the Blue Ridge Youth Soccer Association Cup to Sherando for the first time in the three-year history of the award, given to the best of the Winchester and Frederick County Schools teams.

"I think maybe some people were a little reluctant to write down 'state championship,' because they didn't want to set their goals too high," captain Spencer Burkholder added.

After that meeting, the Judges knew that their potential would not take a back seat to their worries.

"I was like, 'How about we just take it one game at a time, and we beat everybody down the line?'" Balio said. "And they were like, 'Yeah.' I think they bought into that, not letting up — where the past two seasons we've kind of had ups and downs."

Balio's team went on to beat everybody down the line, going 14-0-2 in the regular season and 1-0-1 against both Sherando and Millbrook. That's why Balio is The Northern Virginia Daily's Boys Soccer Coach of the Year.

"He'll do some things that other coaches probably wouldn't do," senior defender Matt Brannon said. "He'd put a defender up in the forward position just to mix things up. If we weren't having a good game on offense, he'd take one of our outside backs like Graham Sharples and push him up to forward, and see if we can get anything going."

Balio's daily halftime adjustments were key in keeping Handley — a team that constantly found itself behind the eight ball early in games — in the win column.

"It was routine. We'd be sluggish for the first 10 minutes, 15 minutes, then it'd be even or we found ourselves in a hole," Balio said. "Soccer's so funny — you've got to adjust on the fly and stuff like that. And we had the ability this year — it felt easy at times — of making those decisions."

Brannon cited the team's most anticipated regular season game — the Judges' home game against Sherando on April 24 — as the one where Balio was at his best. Getting "worked" by Sherando's Josh Mort in the midfield to the tune of a 1-0 halftime deficit, Balio (and assistant coach John Sharples) moved Andrew Marut back to sweeper, brought Brannon up to midfielder and brought in Chris Purvis. The Judges rallied for two second-half goals to earn their most precious win.

"It was a huge adjustment," Brannon said. "Three different players switched, which is not that common."

Before the season, Balio drew up a grid on a white board with 14 different goals — "Win Every Air Duel," "Set Piece Goal" and "10+ Shots" — that allowed Sharples and him to compartmentalize every aspect of the team's play. Orange check marks between the goals on the left axis and the games listed across the top indicated against which opponents the Judges had accomplished which tasks.

"It gave us the ability, as a coaching staff, to see where our weaknesses were and try to fix those," Balio said.

The best part about the grid? Balio could place an orange check mark between the name of every single opponent and the category at the very top of the list: "Won Game."

R Contact Craig Juer at cjuer@nvdaily.com

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