During the high school girls’ soccer season, King’s Fork and Nansemond River high schools have players that wage war against each other on the pitch, creating an exciting rivalry in the Ironclad Conference during the past two years.

When it comes to club soccer, some of those foes become allies.

Cydney Nichols, Skylar Wall, Rebecca Washburn and Hannah Marston of the Lady Bulldogs join Kamarie Jewette, Daijah Norris and Kayleigh McQueen of the Lady Warriors to help form the Churchland Soccer League Xplosion U16 squad.

With the exception of McQueen, who joined the group more recently and has now left the team to play in another age bracket, the Suffolk standouts have grown up playing as teammates.

“They’re all ultra-competitive, and they have fantastic team chemistry,” said Xplosion coach Mike Marston, who also serves as coach at King’s Fork.

The Suffolk stars have helped create a club team that has been nothing short of dominant during the 2014-15 campaign. It has gone 23-3-1 overall and has qualified to play in a national tournament beginning on Thursday.

Marston has coached Jewette, Hannah Marston, Nichols, Norris, Wall and Washburn for the past five years. They used to all be part of a Suffolk Youth Athletic Association team, but then moved a Virginia Beach club at the U13 level.

They moved to the Churchland Soccer League in 2014 because it had an affiliation with the National Premier Leagues, which groups talented club teams into 16 different regions across the country.

The best teams from each region go on to play in the NPL Finals.

To qualify for this event, Marston and his team won the Virginia Conference, which was freshly developed for the 2014-15 season.

The Xplosion went 8-0-1 in conference play.

The squad has also played in nine different tournaments in places like Maryland, New Jersey and North Carolina in addition to Virginia.

“We won six, and we’ve won our last five,” Marston said.

Jewette and Nichols affirmed one of coach Marston’s reasons for why the team has been so good.

“I believe that it’s just the chemistry of how the team works well together, that we trust each other, we depend on each other and at any moment, we know that they have our back,” Jewette said as Nichols agreed, adding, “If somebody’s not on their ‘A’ game, we have somebody else that can step up and help us out.”

Marston noted that one of the girls’ teammates went down with a serious injury in early October. During a big team meeting in early November, he said he challenged the girls to take advantage of all the opportunities they are given because injury can interrupt or cut short anyone’s career, despite taking precautions.

“They’ve been undefeated since then,” Marston said.

They defeated the New Jersey state champions when they were in North Carolina in November. The final score was 3-1.

“From the opening whistle, the girls completely dominated,” Marston said. “When they think they have a challenge in front of them that they can wrap their mind around, those are typically their best games.”

The three goals came from Nichols, Norris and Madison Bristow.

One signature game for the Xplosion came last August against the team that won the state championship in Virginia. The game was locked in a 1-1 tie, but “Cydney had a breakaway with a minute to go.”

She launched a shot, but most thought it went just wide of the goal, and the game ended in a tie, with the Xplosion’s lone goal coming from Washburn.

But watching the video of the game, the team noticed Nichols’ shot actually went just inside the goal, passing through a hole in the net that made it look like a miss.

Even though the Xplosion did not know this directly after the game, “I think that they felt like they out-played them anyway,” Marston said.

The team competes in pool play in the NPL Finals in Westfield, Ind. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, facing teams from California, North Carolina and New York. If they qualify, the semifinals are on Sunday and the final is on Monday.