Castle View, the top-ranked boys soccer team in the CHSAANow.com Class 5A poll, ran into a stubborn opponent on Sept. 14 in its Continental League opener against Regis Jesuit.

The Sabercats of Castle Rock were coming off a 3-2 overtime victory over second-ranked Boulder and had chances to escape with another OT win but had to settle for a 1-1 tie against the Raiders in a match played at Lou Kellogg Stadium in Aurora.

“It wasn't one of our best games but a lot of that had something to do with Regis going real hard,” said Castle View coach Mark Burfeind. “We just tried to weather the storm and made too many mistakes.”

Aurora-based Regis grabbed a 1-0 lead after Sabercats keeper Ryen Royce came 20 yards out from the goal in an attempt to deflect a high shot only to see the ball wind up at the feet of Regis' Joseph Bennett, who scored at the 16-minute mark of the first half.

“He (Royce) came out of the box and tried to hit it with his chest and it kind of rolled off his arm and right to them,” said Burfeind.

Senior Bailey Voit, off an assist by Antonino Piscitella, tied up the match for Castle View in the second half in the 56th minute, but then the Sabercats were bottled up for most of the rest of regulation time as the Raiders applied offensive pressure.

“Like I said, they came out on fire and we never matched what they were doing and we struggled the whole game,” added Burfeind.

Castle View had at least two good chances to win during the two 10-minute overtime sessions.

Senior Jack Pucciano, who had 16 points in Castle View's first five games, got free on a breakaway with 1:35 still to play in the first OT, but his shot was handled by the Regis goalie.

“Probably our overall best player got the ball on a breakaway and the keeper made a good save,” said Burfeind.

Then in the second OT, Chardel Moussata came in alone on the Regis goal but his shot sailed wide of the net.

“We moved one of our outside mids who is really fast up top and he got a breakaway and just hit it off the side of his foot,” explained Burfeind. “He had the whole goal open. Yeah, we had a few chances.”

Castle View has a 6-1 overall record after a 3-2 overtime win over Chaparral on Sept. 16 when Chardel Moussata scored the winning goal. Regis was 2-2-1 following a 1-0 win over Legend on Sept. 16.

“As bad as we played, a tie isn't all bad in this game,” explained Burfeind. “It doesn't hurt us. We had a pretty hard non-conference schedule and we got through that and so a tie isn't all bad. We would have liked to have a win, but a tie is better than a loss. You look at the grand scheme of things, it is not a killer.

“I expected better but it was still one of those games when we didn't play well. I told the boys it is minor, don't let the highs be too high or the lows be too low and come back and be ready to go.”