After crucial wins and nail-biting losses this  season, Diamond Bar High School’s boys soccer team  find themselves in the middle of the standings of  the Palomares League with a 2-2-1 record.

Following losses at the beginning of the season to Garden Grove and Arcadia, the coaches decided to tweak the team’s  formation.

“We started to play a little more together. Our defense was stronger, it always starts with the back line,” head coach Kemp Wells said.

These changes included moving senior captain Peter Larcheveque to defense, along with adjusting their midfielders.

 The team now plays a four-four-two formation, with four players in the midfield and two forwards in the front.

“It was definitely the formation change that turned things around for us, after moving some people around we finally found something that works,” Larcheveque said.

As far as the starting lineup goes, Wells tries to move around  players to see where they fit best on the field.

“We have a few players that definitely stand out, but the bulk of the team is very close in ability, so we try and look for who’s playing well that day,” Wells said.

Team captains senior Nicholas Wong and Larcheveque agree that senior David Gutierrez has shown the most improvement  since the beginning of the season and is one of the team’s heavy hitters when it comes to offense. The  midfielder is leading the team with 11 goals.

“No one was expecting him to score so much in such a little amount of time. We knew he was good, but we weren’t expecting him to be carrying the entire team,” Larcheveque said.

Another key player has been  senior Rajvir Dua. In previous years, Dua played midfielder on the junior varsity team. Since moving up to varsity this year, Dua has been playing goalie.

“He is not as experienced playing goalie, but he is aggressive, and that helps a lot on the field,” Wells said.

Although the team still has hopes for playoffs, they still have to face  opponents who have a history of placing first in the league like Claremont and Glendora.

“They are generally a strong team and there is a big rivalry between us,” Wong said of going up against Claremont. They tied Claremont with a score of 1-1 after double overtime.

In the team’s two losses, against Glendora and Ayala, the boys held a 1-0 lead until the second half of the game.

“The league is very balanced, I don’t think anyone is going to go undefeated, or win even eight games unless they get extremely lucky,” Wells said.