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With its 1-0 victory over Churchill Friday in the first round of the 4A West Region playoffs, the fourth-seeded Blazers secured at least one more home game. Which is amazing, considering where they were at the beginning of October.

On the first day of the month, they fell to Springbrook — which finished the season 3-9 — by two goals, moving to 2-3 on the season.

Since then?

"It's now an eight-game non-losing streak, six-game winning streak, I think, and we haven't allowed a goal in six games now," said senior striker Aaron Baldwin. "Early in the season, we had some bad losses, and we lost some games we didn't expect to lose. But we got better from it."

Now 8-3-2, the Blazers have several impressive wins on their resume, including back-to-back 2-0 decisions over No. 1 seed Sherwood and Walter Johnson.

It is hard to pinpoint a single key, but Baldwin has emerged as one of the top players in the county. He again proved it against the Bulldogs, scoring the lone goal in the game's 22nd minute.

On a terrific bending cross from sophomore Alex Demouy, all Churchill goalkeeper Eli Lorenzi could do was parry the ball to the top of the box. Baldwin collected, made one deft move, and shelved a laser upper 90 right side. It was his ninth goal of the season.

Demouy, for his part, was not even on the team when the season started.

"I came late to tryouts, like two weeks late, and I didn't want to try out for varsity," said Demouy. "So I tried out for JV. Two days into the season, they moved me up, and here I am."

Demouy made a point to single out three stars on the other side of the field: Defenders Jamie Amaya and Dominic Ventimiglia and goalkeeper Kit Durban. Since the Springbrook loss, the Blazers have allowed just 3 goals, second only to Clarksburg (1) in the last month.

On the other side of the field, it was somewhat of a fitting end to the season for Churchill (4-10-1).

By the end of the game, the Bulldogs fielded only one starter (midfielder Cameron Kidwell) from last year's squad, which went undefeated during the regular season. Several expected holdovers were injured early this fall, including defender Brendan Warshauer and goalkeeper Noah Sees, with broken collarbones.

They had opportunities, notably from impressive freshmen strikers Patrick Tshiani and Crispin Muessle, but simply did not have the firepower to penetrate Blair's formidable back line.

However, they have an exciting 2010 to look forward to. It is hard to imagine another school in the county with a more tested returning class, including sophomore Dylan Regan and juniors Stephen Hauschild, Ryan Beckett and Petey Liakakis.

"We started out with a lot of great expectations, suffered some things we didn't expect, but started playing some pretty darn good soccer," said Churchill head coach Arnold Tarzy. "I thought we did ourselves proud tonight. I'm excited for the future."

3A West Region

Suffice it to say, Quince Orchard likes playing Einstein.

With a 5-0 victory in the first round of the 3A West Region playoffs, the Cougars matched their top scoring output of the fall. The other time was a 5-2 ouster of the Titans on Oct. 13.

The victory advances Quince Orchard to a second-round matchup at No. 1 Tuscarora (Frederick County) on Tuesday.

"We were missing two starters, so that's a little concern for us," said Quince Orchard head coach Jim McEvoy. "It was a close game at half, and then we just kind of came out really inspired on the second."

That's an understatement: Quince Orchard scored all five of its goals in the second half. Freshman Luis Zegarra got the ball rolling on a header, and senior Matt Ryan finished a beautiful passing combination 10 minutes later. Striker Raphael Sepenou later scored on a breakaway, and sophomore Juan Quintanilla put the finishing touches on the win with two late tallies.

Linganore 2, Kennedy 1

The Cavaliers fell behind by two and ran out of time at the finish. The Lancers converted a penalty kick in the first half and a free kick midway through the second.

Sophomore Moussa Traore cut the lead in half with 15 minutes left, scoring his seventh goal of the season. And the Cavaliers had plenty of chances in the final stages, even hitting the post once.

"We just got unlucky at the end," said Kennedy head coach Kristin Werdann. "I return a little over half the team next year, but eight seniors graduate [including] some very key positions."