The Austin boys soccer team has closed the path to its net over the past couple of weeks and it’s certainly been an entire team effort.

With standout senior Kevin Ortiz sidelined with an illness, the Packers didn’t miss a beat as they picked up their sixth straight shutout, icing out Owatonna 3-0 in Art Hass Stadium Tuesday.

Owatonna (8-3-1 overall, 6-2 Big Nine) had scored 15 total goals in its last four games, but it was limited just to seven shot attempts against Austin and all of them were stopped by sophomore keeper Casey Berg.

Austin now has eight shoutouts on the season after it had allowed six goals in four games — two of which were losses — earlier in the season. Austin senior midfielder Juan Vera said the whole team had to step up for the defense to find its rhythm.

“We have a lot of good players individually, but as a team we just weren’t clicking at first,” Vera said. “ Now we’re starting to get rolling and it’s showing. It’s going good for us. Casey is young in net, but he’s really good out there as well. He for sure has our backs.”

While Vera and Andres Garcia were patrolling the midfield against the Huskies, the back-line defense of Elton Tolbert, Dylan Hanegraaf and Victor Velazquez was keeping the Huskies from getting any easy looks.

“Every time we come to play, we always come to win,” Tolbert said. “We want to win all of our games. The whole team has been talking lately and we’ve been playing our regular game.”

Austin’s offense struck early in the win as Caleb Simerson scored on a tip in off a Lee Reh pass eight minutes into the game and Reh added a goal of his own with 17 minutes left in the half when he blasted a shot off the top cross bar for a goal.

Henry Tolbert scored Austin’s third goal of the game in the second half. The Packers finished with 12 shots on goal.

Austin head coach Jens Levisen said much of the team’s success lately has come due to the fact that players have accepted their roles and played within themselves.

“We have to keep guys playing the way that they’re supposed to play in those positions and not try to do too much,” Levisen said. “The guys have to have trust in their teammates to play their positions. It’s kind of fun if Elton gets a run up, but I don’t want him to make a run up. I want him to hold to his position. The defense came up big and had they not been where they were, it could’ve easily been a different game. It’s everybody buying in.”