In the world of sports journalism, it is a lousy idea to start a story with a weather-related lead.

It is, they say, trite. The easy way out.

However, it is impossible to report on Tuesday night’s varsity soccer match without including the climate conditions under which it was played: It was wet and it was cold.

Really cold.

It would be wonderful to report something witty here like: “Despite the chill in the air, the fire of competition spurred the Spartans on to a home field victory.”

Life, however, is not a Disney movie and sometimes the home team does not win -— even though we know they should.

Sometimes it’s a cold, wet Northwest night and the best you can do is break even.

So it was, that the Bainbridge High varsity boys soccer team settled for their third tie of the season in a 1-1 home field match against the visitors from Franklin High.

The visitors managed the game’s first goal shortly before the end of the first half, which put the Spartans coming back into the game down one. They responded quickly however, and evened things up.

From then on neither team seemed able to gain the advantage and the score stood in frigid solidarity with the night’s temperature.

The Spartans’ sole goal was scored by Mario Vukic.

The stalemate was a tongue on the frozen flagpole for the Spartans, coming on the hot heels of so successful a week.

But, said Spartan Head Coach Ian McCallum, maybe not an entirely unpredictable one.

“We had a weak game last Tuesday, we had a weak game this Tuesday,” he laughed.

“Wet Tuesdays are not good for the Spartans right now.”

The team’s second tie of the year had, in fact, occurred on the Tuesday before (amid much similar weather) when the BHS team came up 2-all on the road against O’Dea. They bounced back quick, however, and scored a big shutout at Bishop Blanchet Thursday, which made the Franklin match all the more disappointing, McCallum explained.

“I just think we’ve got to get consistent — and you’d hope at this point we are consistent, but with spring break and then moving schedules and whatever’s going on in the high school life for a teenage boy it’s hard to be consistent,” he said.

“Today was just one of those nights,” he added. “We played well. I think it was just one of those nights [with] the early opportunities we had that we didn’t take they grew in confidence.”

McCallum said the game’s outcome was indicative of the constant level of competition in the Metro.

“Like we’ve said right from the get-go, you’ve got to work hard for every game in this conference and we worked hard tonight. We just try to over complicate things,” he explained.

“We played some good possession, but taking one or two passes — two touches too many rather than just play simple and play fast — we just needed to be more direct in the first half when we had the wind behind us.

“In the second half, we wanted to play too many passes instead of moving the ball forward on the ground,” McCallum said.

The tie left the Spartans with an overall  season record of 7-1-3 (6-1-3 in conference games) and the top-ranked spot in the league.

Garfield High holds the number-two spot, with a league record of 6-2-1.

The Spartans will play at home for their next two games: Friday, April 24 against Ingraham, and then again Tuesday, April 28 against North Kitsap.

Despite the third tie, McCallum said the team is and has been playing very well and he is confident they will advance on to a successful postseason as well.

“We’ve just got to get back on track again. That’s the trick.”