NEW ORLEANS ― When the final horn sounded on Jesuit’s 2007-08 soccer campaign with a devastating last-minute loss to Woodlawn in the semifinals, attention turned immediately to the 2008-09 season.

Nearly a year later, the fruits of that heartbreaking day on the pitch are coming to bear.

Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

Jesuit's soccer team works on ball skills as head coach Hubie Collins, far right, watches. The Blue Jays are 17-0-1 and ranked No. 1 in the state in Division I.

Jesuit is once again king of Division I, starting off the year 17-0-1 as the Blue Jays head into district play next week ranked No. 1.

“All the players on last year’s team still on this year’s team saw how disappointed the seniors were to screw it up last year,” captain and senior midfielder Charles Kleinschmidt said. “It kind of disappointed everybody. It’s hard to grasp that your senior year of Jesuit soccer.”

Already some demons from last season’s 22-3-4 finish have been exorcised.

Jesuit opened with a 4-1 win over Woodlawn this season.

“We had that sour taste in our mouth from last year,” Kleinschmidt said. “That first game we played, there was no stopping us.”

The Blue Jays haven’t slowed down, either, outscoring opponents 51-5 thus far. Fourteen of Jesuit’s 18 games have ended in shutouts.

Last season, you could say, most certainly lingered for a bulk of the 17 seniors on the current incarnation of the Blue Jays.

“A lot of these guys, at the end of February last year when the soccer season was over for us, a lot of them had a long hard think about the season and what the goal was and how they lived up to their individual and team goals,” Jesuit Coach Hubie Collins said.

“I think some of them felt there was a lot of unfinished business. I think a lot of them had it in their minds in the offseason. When it came around to tryouts for varsity, you could see they were ready. They were chomping at the bit and ready to go.”

This is nothing new for Jesuit. The Blue Jays haven’t finished the season before the semifinals since 1998. Jesuit has made the finals in seven of the past 10 seasons, finishing as titlists in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007.

It’s that history, Collins believes, that keeps the program and players from resting on its laurels.

“A lot of them have been in the program from 8th grade, JV and varsity,” Collins said. “They know at all levels of Jesuit, there’s an expectation that the players put on themselves and they carry on.”

But don’t think for once that Collins, Kleinschmidt or the rest of the team are content with starting out 17-0-1.

District play begins Jan. 14 when Jesuit hosts Brother Martin in the district opener at Pan American Stadium.

Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

Charles Kleinschmidt, a senior midfielder at Jesuit, is credited by head coach Hubie Collins as taking care of the little things on the field and behind the scenes this season, allowing the Blue Jays to get off to a 17-0-1 start.

A year ago, every match between the two clubs was a knock-down, drag-out fight on the field.

Collins doesn’t expect anything different this and said that in the end, it’s the games from here on out that will be remembered.

“When you look back at the end of the season after the playoffs are over, the focus on the midway point in the season, no one will really remember much about who won the St. Paul’s Tournament or who was 18-0,” Collins said. “It’s going to be district champions at the end of January and state champions at the end of February.”

The first 18 games, or preseason as Collins called it, were about getting the team prepared for a district run.

“One of the things we were looking for up to now is to show consistency on the field, to give everybody an opportunity to play and prove themselves,” Collins said.

Already Kleinschmidt sees a difference in this year’s team compared to last year’s.

“The team reminds me of the team my sophomore year when we went 31-0,” he said. “The chemistry is there, the desire to win is there and doing the hard work is there, too. We know we want to be in Shreveport by the end of the year and be in the same sentence as that 31-0 team.”

But Collins isn’t jumping the gun just yet.

“It’s important that players all the time understand they come to training, they’ve got to work hard and they’ve got to produce week in, week out,” Collins said.

“That’s the only way that the team is going to achieve the goals they want to achieve. It only takes for one game and one day for everybody to sit back on their laurels and you have an upset.”

Bradley Handwerger can be reached at bhandwerger@wwltv.com or 504-529-6439.