Nashua South speedy boys soccer senior forward and team leader Rory Olsen always helped spread the philosophy of discipline and focus preached by his coach, Tom Bellen.

But on the night of Sept. 22, he didn’t believe what Bellen had to say as they sat in a circle on Motta Field at Stellos Stadium.

The Panthers head guy told his players they were going to win the Division I state title in six weeks.

“When he said that, I truly didn’t believe him,” Olsen said.

But the senior forward was frustrated. It was the second loss in exactly a week’s time for a team/program that had gone unbeaten in 24 straight games. He had missed the first loss, to Manchester Central, and can’t stand losing, so the defeat at the hands of rival North stung.

But he came around.

“After we kept practicing, I had to believe him,” Olsen said. “He’s my coach, and he carried me to a state championship.”

Olsen saw a change when the team beat Manchester Memorial in the next game, 2-0. Also, all the pressure was gone, right? So why not win it all?

“I saw our momentum change, our heads change,” he said. “We weren’t undefeated, we weren’t nationally ranked. All the pressure was off of us. We could start fresh, and we could just play our game.”

Bellen said he knew the Panthers likely wouldn’t go undefeated, and they should focus on the four-game tournament stretch, one at a time, after they got through the gauntlet of a regular season.

He felt strongly after the loss to North that the Panthers had outplayed the Titans in that game, but hey, that’s soccer sometimes, right? North was a good team and it’s a shame the two did not meet in the semis for a second straight season.

But the message was one of confidence.

“I told the boys after North, and we outplayed them, that we were going to win the state championship,” Bellen said after his team did just that on Sunday. “I absolutely told them. I said we needed to clean up two small things, and we would start peaking at the right time, and we will not give up those things that hurt us. The giveaways, or the things that don’t seem like big deals, but are. They took care of all that stuff.”

Nashua South’s Rory Olsen, left, and Alexander McGrath race to the ball during Sunday’s Divsion I title game in Exeter. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

This was a different season than last year. First of all, the temperature for this title game was an incredible 50 degrees warmer than when Santi Somorrostro buried the 11th round penalty kick at Stellos to beat Hanover the first time. Fitting that a year later he gets a goal and an assist when his team, without scorer Sammy Hadouche (head injury) and forward Jameson Mondale (illness), needed him the most.

This South team, while talented, didn’t go undefeated, as Olsen alluded. The Panthers weren’t nationally ranked. There was one thing on their minds, and that was simply the next game. Nothing about a legacy. Nothing about living up to what happened last year.

Just get the highest seed possible, win each round.

“We’re back again,” Panther forward Jadiel Bomfim said with a grin. “We win it again. … At the beginning of the year, I knew we had a talented team. But we had to do a lot of work to get here.”

And believe.

tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.