The Chazy boys soccer team has picked up a delightful habit: winning Class D state championships. What an impressive record of success for a generation of players and their current coach, Rob McAuliffe.

You look at certain schools and wonder what makes their teams stand out year after year above everyone else. McAuliffe and his boys have certainly attained a level that would be difficult to duplicate.

He has been coaching for 14 years — in his first year, he was co-coach, along with Tom Brandell — and in those 14 years, Chazy has the unimaginable record of 284 wins, 21 losses and seven ties. They have won an astonishing 11 Section VII Class D championships.

How can you account for a team losing only 6 percent of its games?

You have to credit the coach and his predecessors.

Kids in Chazy play soccer almost from the time they can walk — the same as they do in Elizabethtown, Willsboro, Westport, Ellenburg and so many other communities in the North Country. Legendary coach George Brendler got the ball rolling at Chazy 30 years ago, taking the team to its first state tournament. The field at Chazy, dedicated in 2005, is named after Brendler.

Apparently, McAuliffe and other Chazy coaches are making sure their athletes are learning to play the game correctly right from the outset.

The Chazy boys have not only dominated local soccer, they have cast their sizeable shadow over the entire state, winning Class D titles in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009.

Under McAuliffe, the Eagles advanced to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Final Four 10 times. Star players come and go, but the Chazy boys soccer team remains a fixture in the state tournament.

The Press-Republican has quoted McAuliffe as saying that "anything less than a state championship is unacceptable. The team goal every year is to win the state title."

It's an easy thing to say — not so easy to do. Yet McAuliffe's Eagles do it, year in, year out.

It's not that McAuliffe invented Chazy soccer. There is an impressive history there. Since 1953, when the team was winless, the team has a record of 723-162-41. Brendler and Tom Tregan preceded McAuliffe and also produced amazing results. (McAuliffe played for Tregan and now coaches Tregan's son.)

But McAuliffe has taken that jewel and polished it to a new gloss.

This year, Chazy was 20-0-2 and ranked first in the state. When state all-time leading scorer Nolan Ryan graduated two years ago, the rest of the teams throughout New York must have thought they would stand a chance against the Eagles. This year's edition of the Eagles convincingly laid that notion to rest.

Usually, North Country teams don't fare so well outside the region. We all take pride when a local team distinguishes itself downstate.

With Chazy, the question is no longer whether they can play with downstate boys, but can downstate boys play with them.