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MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times

Blacksburg High School soccer players Michael Releford (foreground) and Glen Nuenighoff participate in agility drills. Some of the team's seniors have been willing to step aside and let players such as Releford shine.

Soccer is a hard game. You don't have to play for a bad team to learn the truth of it, either.

Blacksburg High has the most decorated program in VHSL Group AA. Year after year, it seems as though the Bruins are breezing toward an annual appointment in the postseason.

It's not that easy, of course. The taste for hard labor is a trademark of coach Shelley Blumenthal's teams.

Four of the team's six seniors have been tested throughout their careers, and sometimes not in the most pleasant ways. They are guys who don't know easy.

Yet they keep coming back, no matter how difficult the challenge. The only thing that will ever stop them is graduation.

The kind of grit shown by back line specialist Brandon Brodkin, goal keeper Logan Thompson, midfielder Nick Britten and utility man Tim West is not the kind of leadership that registers high on a decibel meter.

It is the kind of leadership that teaches a team how to win, though. The four have played for teams that have gone 63-3-3 over the past three years and winning the program's record ninth state championship in 2007.

Going into Friday's state semifinals against old rival Jefferson Forest, which was undefeated, those four Blacksburg seniors along with the more celebrated Daniel Hiller and Alistair Moore are fast closing in on the finale of their varsity careers.

The obstacles have been many and the rewards sometimes few for Brodkin, Britten, West and Thompson. What they've missed in individual rewards this year, though, they've made up for by sharing in the satisfaction of playing for an 18-2-2 team that is back in the state tournament.

"Tradition is an important part of this program," Britten said. "It's good to have been able to contribute to it and see that the tradition will continue on."

Britten has had to rebound from hard luck. A starter in the midfield early in the year, he developed pain in his leg and eventually couldn't continue. When he was ready to return, he couldn't win his starting job back.

"Obviously, we have a deep team," said Britten, who plans to attend Virginia Tech. "The people who got on the field played very well."

West, whose older brother Bobby was a baseball standout at Blacksburg, has not been that sort of high-profile athlete. Instead, he has settled into a job as a soccer role player, most of the time relieving at outside midfield but also occasionally showing up to play on the front line as well as on defense. This is a player who literally is all over the field.

West's organized soccer-playing days are coming to a rapid conclusion. Soccer devotees often speak of the beauty of the game. Soon, West will be pursuing another kind of beauty. He'll study art at Virginia Commonwealth with the likelihood of specializing in graphic art.

Thompson has been a good soldier in goal for the Bruins but has had to make way for a player judged to have superior skills and athletic ability, junior Michael Releford. Thompson has played a lot of soccer for Blacksburg even so.

"It's been a competitive team here," he said. "There's been ups and downs for me. I wanted to be a consistent player every time I'm on the field. That's what I focus on. I try to do the best I can every time I go on the field. I know it's the coach's choice [that Thompson doesn't start] and I can't do anything about it. But I know where I'd like to be and I'm happy with the way I play every time I go on the field."

His coaches are happy with him.

"He gives us the luxury of having another outstanding player to turn to in goal," Blumenthal said.

Which serves as a reminder that Thompson and the other reserves (Blumenthal calls them "support players") are one illness or injury away from being back in the starting lineup.

Thompson still loves the game just as much as ever.

He plans to take part in some teaching clinics for keepers this summer. Next fall, when he begins school at Radford University, he'll be considering the possibility of trying to walk on for coach Spencer Smith's Highlanders.

Brodkin knows what it's like to be one of the top players on a playing field. He's started at middle linebacker for Blacksburg's football team. It's not a position earned by marginal players.

He's known the spotlight. There's none brighter than the one shining on two wrestlers going nose to nose. Brodkin participated in that demanding sport up until this year.

In soccer, he's also a defender, occasionally being deployed to midfield. He has started and relieved, depending on the occasion.

Between soccer and football, he's passionate about both, which in particular, he can't say.

"That's the hardest question I've been asked since I was 7," he said. "I haven't decided."

In one sense he has. In a clear case of voting with his feet, he's opted to play soccer for Emory & Henry next year.

Guys like these four put the steel in a team's backbone. Nobody knows that better than Blumenthal.

"These are seniors who have really accepted and embraced their roles even though there are other players who may be seeing more playing time," the coach said.

"It's a real credit to them being excellent teammates and being able to look at the collective goals the team has."