This season, Northampton head boys’ soccer coach Adam Bastidas watched his team take the next step from a 6-12 campaign last year.

As a result, the Konkrete Kids will enter this week’s district playoffs with a respectable seeding, a home game, and a newfound sense of respect among themselves and their opponents. They recently dropped a 4-0 decision to Parkland in the East Penn Conference semifinals.

“It was an accomplishment for us to get there,” said Bastidas, who club currently has a 13-6 mark. “As a team, we have really made a lot of strides this year. Being in the league playoffs, we also got a lot of the pressures of the win-or-go-home atmosphere that districts has. It gets the emotions out of the way.

“We proved to ourselves that we could live up to our expectations. We had some good pieces in some good places this year.”

Bastidas stated how his club began to know how to win. The Kids lost nine games last year by just one goal. This year, their season turned with an eight-game winning streak after a 2-3 start.

“Our record really didn’t reflect how good we were last year,” he said. “We were in games and we didn’t know how to finish. This year, we learned from what we did last year and we took care of the little things. Last year, we didn’t respond well when we got behind and we went down pretty easy.

“We knew we should make districts and we knew we had a shot at the league playoffs. Our streak was a great thing for us in many ways.”

Bastidas noted the development of senior goalie Morgan Heffelfinger, who played organized soccer for the first time and also took the place of former standout Austin Cooper. Heffelfinger is standout on the basketball team.

“He really has developed really nicely for us,” said Bastidas of Heffelfinger. “Soccer is one of the toughest sports to step into and learn in one year. But he is a great athlete and he caught on very quickly.”

Bastidas planned to give his team a few days off before districts.

“We can use a couple of days to rejuvenate ourselves,” he said. “After that, we’ll get back into game mode.”

The Kids will host fifth-seed Emmaus on Oct. 27, at 6:30 p.m.