BURLINGAME — Phillip

De Rosa could tell early that his Burlingame High girls soccer team had special chemistry. Before the season kicked into gear, the 10th-year coach pulled aside his four freshmen to ask if the older players had been making life too difficult for them.

The young Panthers assured De Rosa that wasn't the case,

and one added, "You know, Mr. D, they even say hello to us when we walk down the halls."

And so a remarkable bond, and season, began.

"I've never had 19 kids who love each other and totally respect each other," De Rosa said.

Though he was blessed with star power, it was De Rosa who molded the Panthers into a unit that would pocket Burlingame's first Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division and Central Coast Section championships during a 23-0-2 campaign.

Asked at what point he began to think his Panthers could be a team of destiny, De Rosa, the County Girls Soccer Coach of the Year, pointed to three games: the "stunning" 4-0 win over Presentation to win the Burlingame Thanksgiving Invitational, and 2-1 comeback wins over Woodside and Carlmont in the first half of the Bay season.

After enduring three straight runner-up finishes to eight-time defending champion Carlmont, De Rosa finally got his program over the hump. Fortified by the lockdown defense their coach constantly drilled them on, the Panthers outscored their Bay opponents 39-3 to finish 14-0-2, giving De Rosa his first championship at the prep

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In the CCS Division II playoffs, Burlingame broke a five-year streak of quarterfinal losses, beating Valley Christian 3-1. A 2-0 win over Presentation — the Panthers' 18th shutout — secured the section title.

The Panthers were just the fifth CCS team in 21 years to finish unbeaten, and they posted more wins than any team since Los Gatos (24) in 1995-96.

"They were a machine," said Aragon coach Michael Flynn. "He's lived and breathed that program for 10 years. What he's done with that program is phenomenal."