You win some, you lose some — or not.

The Bainbridge High varsity boys soccer team has stuttered a bit at the start of the season, racking up two ties and one (sort of) loss in their first three outings.

By the numbers, it’s not great news. But what’s missing from the numbers, Spartan Head Coach Ian McCallum said, is the true story: the tale of a team brimming with talent, just a few tweaks away from soccer success.

What’s the biggest thing in the Spartans’ way? Themselves, the coach said.

“I think we’re trying to be too cute, too tricky,” McCallum explained, adding that simplification was the new order of the day going ahead.

“I think we’re going to be a team that’s going to possess the ball,” he said. “Now, what we do with that possession is going to determine how our season goes.”

How it’s gone so far has been full of more up-and-downs than a game full of headers.

In their first match of the year, the Spartans tied 2-2 against Kingston High in a contest McCallum described as a decent first showing.

Then, on March 14, the Spartans were bested 3-0 by Ballard (it was later overturned due to a technicality), but it was more a case of the Spartans failing than them winning, the coach said. Bainbridge made mistakes, and the Beavers were in the right place to make the Spartans pay.

Finally, on March 17, against West Seattle, the Spartans held the visitors to a 0-0 stalemate in a showing more indicative of the team they could be, McCallum said.

“I think we have some very creative players and I don’t want to take that creativity away, but at some point there’s got to be an end product,” he said. “If we’re just too tricky, or whatever, you don’t get the goals.”

It’s something that’s taken center stage at practice as of late.

“We’re doing a lot of attacking and I’d say in practice we’re probably a little more direct than we’ve been in the last two games — or the three games, even,” McCallum said. “We got to take that from practice into the game.”

The 2017 Spartan roster boasts a plethora of upperclassmen with a massive amount of combined field time, undoubtedly the source of some of that unnecessarily fancy footwork.

The team has nine seniors: Thomas Crowley, Riley Dixon, Will Dowell, Ryan Fitzgerald, Derek Klein, Jordan Manor, Ben Oliffe Jonathan Owen and Jake Prodinski; and seven juniors: Andy Becker, Ian Drury, Jacob Keasler, Tyco Libes, Isaiah Mass, Kevin McCann and Mario Vukic.

The squad’s trio of cocaptians are Dowell, Crowley and Prodinski, who McCallum said he’ll look to to be “leaders on and off the field.”

Each of the three boys soccer teams have several “quality keepers,” the coach added, with the varsity squad’s go-to guy in goal being Becker.

Regardless of the team’s of skill or talent, the coach said he’s far too well aware that there would be no easy wins in the notoriously tough Metro League this season.

“The numbers are great [and] the quality in all three teams in the program is really strong, but every school in the Metro’s got the same thing,” he said. “You get nothing for free in the Metro.”

Among the Spartans’ toughest competitors this year, McCalllum singled out Roosevelt, Garfield, Lakeside and “all the usual suspects” as well.

“I think Ballard are the real deal,” he added. “They’re strong.”

Formidable foes aside, if Bainbridge gets out of their own way, McCallum said, the other teams would do well to be wary of them.

“We’re going to be a team that’s going to possess the ball [and] control games. But it’s taking that control and getting an end product,” he said Friday. “Hopefully that starts coming through next week for sure.”