The Whitehall boys soccer team is off to a tough start, beginning the season with an 0-3-1 mark so far.

However, it doesn’t reflect on their overall effort.

“The boys have been working hard but unfortunately things haven’t seemed to bounce our way yet this season,” said head coach Christian Malone. “It hit right away with some critical injuries of two key attacking players that we are just now looking to get back.”

The season began with two loses to Emmaus and Freedom, which are considered by many to be two of the top three teams in the league.

“Those were not easy matches,” Malone said. “We have been working hard in training to address the things we can control and I continue to tell the boys with a lot of teams being competitive this year that the margins of games will be tighter in a fair amount of games. We have been discussing making sure we take care of the ‘little details.’ I am a believer that the little details add up and become big details.”

There may be some signs things are turning around with a couple of recent games that still, unfortunately, didn’t result in wins. The Zephs tied Easton in double overtime, 0-0. The squad suffered a tough, overtime loss to East Stroudsburg South. Malone said the team controlled the possession about 60-percentn of the time and had 12 shots on goal.

“We just lost our focus in regulation for 4-5 minutes and gave up two goals during that couple minute window,” Malone said about the game.

Malone is hoping the return of some healthy players will make the difference going forward.

“I do believe with such a small margin in last week’s games that two of our never-come-off-the-field players would have made a difference for us,” Malone said. “We now turn our focus to Pleasant Valley and East Stroudsburg North.

“PV is 4-1 so they’ve had a solid start and we have been focusing in practice on how to attack them for Wednesday evening. We will then travel ES North on Friday. The boys are hungry and looking to come away with some positive results this week.”