Ansley Kerley has a class at Century with a view that might be Idaho’s version of Greece. It’s in the back of the school, and the window shows a wide range of rolling mountains, a gorgeous landscape that, in the far distance, includes breathtaking hills.

Closer up, though, Kerley sees something that means more to her. In the early afternoon, hours before Kerley and the Diamondbacks take the field for practice, she’ll look down at the grass and see one person: Peter Stilling, the team’s first-year head coach, setting up cones and preparing for practice.

“You can feel he cares so much,” said Kerley, a senior captain. “Like, he almost broke down in tears today. I don’t know if he wants me to share that. It’s just the fact he cares so much makes us feel important and stuff like that.”

Ask around the team and it becomes clear that this season, as Century has collected an even 6-6 record, several things have keyed this season: Stilling and his preparation, plus players’ commitment to knowing each other, to knowing what makes everybody tick and how they can play with each other best.

Ahead of their regular-season finale, a home matchup with Preston set for Thursday afternoon, the Diamondbacks have seen mixed results. They sizzled to a fast start, shutting out three teams by a combined score of 14-0, then proceeded to drop three of their next four, salvaging an important contest against Preston in that stretch. Then they won two straight, including a 14-0 thrashing of Burley, only to drop their next three, most recently a 4-0 loss to Highland on Tuesday.

After one game in that span, a 3-0 setback to Twin Falls on Monday afternoon, Century players circled up to the side of the field, talking about the circumstances that led to this result. The mood felt drab. Disappointment hung in the air like smog. It registered as something of a surprise: What team takes a regular-season loss so hard?

Turns out, a team that strongly feels it should have won.

“There’s definitely been a lot of that, I’d say, this season,” senior Sophia Hall said. “We’ve definitely had a lot of just emotional moments with our team, where we’re able to connect better and have a bond.”

“I feel like this season is a lot more emotional for a lot of players because we do have a lot of seniors, and it’s their last season ever playing,” added Kerley, whose team rosters nine seniors. “And I think getting everyone to want to win is what we’re really trying to work on recently, and is what that talk probably was about. We felt like we could have won that game, and I believe that we could have with the way we played. We just need more heart.”

That, Kerley explained, isn’t something that only one player can have. That isn’t conducive to the type of team Century wants to build, to the future the Diamondbacks want to foster. So how do they engender that type of emotion?

“I think with our huddles,” Kerley said. “We just have really open communication with me and Soph as captains. They’ll come to us, and we’ll talk to Peter, or we’re just their outlet for communication in that kind of way, so that we all do connect and we’re understanding.”

“It makes it easier on us to get things across,” Hall said, “and for them to be able to talk to us.”

By them, Kerley and Hall mean their teammates, the players who have helped them orchestrate the season to this point. To them, several names come to mind: Taylor Webster, who has returned from injury to provide help in the midfield, Angeline Putnam, who has rebounded from family issues to strengthen the team — “just showing us what she can actually do,” Kerley said. Then the Diamondbacks have pieces like Allison McKinlay and Hattie Jackson, two seniors who have proven invaluable to the team both in emotional intelligence and soccer savvy.

What will Century do with that? The Diamondbacks are looking for their first state tournament appearance in four years. To get there, they will need to fend off 4A District 5 foes Pocatello and Preston, against whom they have gone 1-2 this season.

Whatever happens on that front, what won’t change is this: Kerley will keep sitting in that Century class, peering out the window, seeing her head coach prepare for practice like he’s preparing for the World Cup.

“He’s always planning something,” Kerley said. “We always try new things. And sometimes they don’t work, but sometimes they help us a lot. Like, we’ve changed our formation a lot the past few weeks. And I think some things have been helping a lot with us winning games and power playing.”