In its first year in the WPIAL, the league's newest member and smallest school is making up for lost time.

Beaver County Christian clinched the Section 5-A title in boys' soccer during a 16-2 campaign. Then the Eagles continued their impressive run Monday when they defeated Charleroi Area, 2-0, in the first round of the WPIAL Class A playoffs. They'll play Freedom Area tonight in a quarterfinal match at 7:30 at Moon Area.

Titles are nothing new to the Beaver County Christian School. They won the previous three Southwest Christian Athletic Conference championships before leaving the smaller league in favor of the WPIAL.

"The regular season was better than we would have expected," BCC coach Steve Warden said. "I knew we had a good team this year but I didn't know if we could be that tough because we hadn't done it before. We got better as the year went on. People got moved around and we really figured out where people should be playing."

Beaver County Christian hopes its move is greeted with as much postseason success as the last team to make the jump from the SCAC, Trinity Christian. After joining the WPIAL in 2002, Trinity reached the PIAA title game in 2003 and 2004. The Eagles were quickly able to set the tone for this season with a 2-1 win over Trinity Christian in the first game of the season.

"We looked to what Trinity was able to do and that was a big part of the discussion," Warden said. "I had no idea how far these guys could go but the fact that Trinity could make it -- a school our size and very similar to us in a lot ways -- gave us confidence."

Beaver County Christian lost to Section 5-A power Quaker Valley, 1-0, in its first meeting but returned the favor later in the year with a 3-2 win over the Quakers (10-2), finishing a game ahead of them in the section standings.

One of the most impressive games of the year for Beaver County Christian was actually a 2-1 loss to Center, which was ranked No. 1 in Class AA at the time. The game was the regular-season finale for BCC.

The competitive game against Center came at a price for the Eagles. They lost their goalie, Adam Kephart, one of the top goalies in the WPIAL. A 6-foot-2 senior, he was knocked out of the game with a concussion and forced to miss the beginning of the playoffs. Steve Engle filled in for Kephart in net. Along with Kephart, Sam Guthrie has also been playing a major role defensively, starting as a central defender.

Offensively, the team has been led by a senior duo of Dan Squire and Tom Barr. Squire leads the team with 29 regular-season goals and Barr has set up him up for most of those from his midfield position. Warden anticipates both to continue to play soccer in college. Squire is being recruited by Division III Messiah College.

"Our team is a senior-led team and it's our last year, so we wanted to set the bar high," Squire said. "We were pretty excited to win our section title. It put us in BCC history. In some ways we surprised some people."

The team is now traveling less than they were last season where the schools in the SCAC were spread across Western Pennsylvania but they are still traveling more than most schools. They do not practice or play games on the campus of the school in Beaver Falls.

Instead they travel to a field in Brady's Run Park -- about 15 minutes from the school -- to practice and to Green Valley Park behind Freedom Area High School, which is about 25 minutes away, for games.

Beaver County Christian often had trouble scheduling WPIAL teams in years past. The schools often faced a no-win situation, not wanting to lose to a school that only has 95 total students in grades 9-12.

Freedom, Quigley and Blackhawk often would play Beaver County Christian in exhibition games.

"There are definitely some teams that we caught off guard," Barr said. "They didn't expect us to play the way we did because we are such a small school. The move to the WPIAL definitely motivated us to work hard in the offseason. We knew we had to step up our game. We were used to being on top and now we were sort of the underdogs."

When Warden graduated from the school in 1978, the only school he got to play against was Blackhawk. The school did not form an official soccer program until the following year after he had left.