The end of Cheyenne Mountain’s 1-0 boys’ soccer victory over The Classical Academy resembled the end of a practice.

Cheyenne Mountain had defeated TCA’s Titans, who had traveled to three of the past four state 4A title games. (And won the 2016 title.) Tuesday’s home win has to be considered an upset, although it’s early and might not be seen as much of a shocker later.

You would expect some shouting and celebrating.

CM players declined to celebrate. At all. They trotted over to the handshake line, offered pleasantries to the Titans and quietly returned to a postgame talk with coach Brian Jewell.

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Senior Reese Nilsen scored the only goal.

“We tried to come in thinking we had already won it,” Nilsen said. “And we did. We got the result that we needed.”

The victory means Cheyenne Mountain leaps into the mix, at least for now, of the best 4A teams in the Colorado Springs area. This is, to be sure, an important mix. Over the past six seasons, a Springs-area team has played for the 4A state title. During the era, four Springs-area teams have ruled the state.

Jewell, Cheyenne Mountain’s first-year coach, sold his team on victory even though his players had already suffered through a 3-0 loss to Broomfield in this young season. The Titans, he told his players, were beatable.

“If you think of the trajectory of the programs the last couple of years, they’ve certainly had more success than we have,” Jewell said. “We came into this game thinking maybe on paper we were the underdog but we had the talent to compete with them.”

Really, Jewell said, he expected more. He was pleased to defeat a state powerhouse. He was not especially pleased with his team’s performance.

“To be perfectly frank, it says we can get a result in a game where I don’t think we played very well,” he said. “We can be very happy with the result without being totally happy with the performance.”

Jewell has a point. Both defenses struggled. The final score of the game is hugely misleading. Both teams were firing point-blank shots the entire night, and the score easily could have been 4-3 or 3-2. Superlative goalkeeping by Cheyenne Mountain’s Will Thompson and TCA’s Jack Carpenter kept the score low.

With 15 minutes left, CM’s Ben Rudolph and a defender tangled in the box, and the ball came free.

Nilsen was there waiting. Carpenter had no chance.

“I was sitting on the back side and all I had to do is face the net and just put my leg through it,” Nilsen said.

TCA coach Blake Galvin was pleased with his team, which was playing its opening game. He lost 11 players from last season. His team, he said, is still finding its way.

“We had a lot of chances and we weren’t able to finish them,” he said.

“We’re very young and still trying to figure some things out, but overall I was really pleased with our performance.”