The contrast is striking.

Travis Dinkheller shows his youthful exuberance, not only hoping his team's current winning streak continues, but relishing each victory as it comes.

"Man, this is fun," the first-year coach said after his Quincy High School girls soccer team ran its wnning streak to 11 games with last Friday's 3-1 victory over East Moline. "You see them getting better and getting rewarded for it. That's big fir me."

Meanwhile, Mark Longo takes the success in stride, having experienced enough winning streaks similar to Quincy Notre Dame's current 11-game run to know it could carry over to the postseason or end abruptly any time.

"It's about playing well," Longo said after his team won the QND/Advance Physical Therapy Tournament last weekend. "You can win without playing well. We want to play well, win or lose. We have been doing that and it's led to some pretty good success."

Try remarkable success.

Heading into Tuesday's 6 p.m. rematch at Flinn Stadium, the Quincy teams enjoy their best combined record -- QND is 17-1 and QHS is 14-3 -- at this stage of the season since 2000 when they were 29-3-1.

Coincidentally, that was the season the most impressive streak either team has ever put together began.

QND has not lost to QHS since the 1999 sectional championship, a streak that is now at 22 games. The Lady Raiders are 19-0-3 in that stretch.

You have to go back to 1998 to find the last time QND lost a regular-season meeting with QHS, a run of 21 straight games.

The most recent QND victory was the most lopsided in the series as the Lady Raiders got a hat trick from freshman forward Shannon Foley and posted a 5-0 victory on April 7 at QND. It was the last time QHS lost.

QND's last and only loss occurred April 20 in a penalty-kick shootout at Troy, Mo., meaning neither team has lost this month.

That means something has to give.

— mschuckman@whig.com/221-3366