No. 1 Pella knocks out Saints

CEDAR FALLS – Turns out the Xavier Saints should have been underdogs after all.

There's a reason Pella has the top-ranked football team in Class 3A, and those reasons were there for everyone at the UNI-Dome to see Thursday night.

A 27-0 semifinal win for the Dutch was top rank-ish, for sure. They hit hard and quick with a pair of first-quarter touchdowns and didn't let Xavier begin to think about a comeback with an absolutely smothering defensive effort.

With back-to-back Class 4A championship appearances and a drop in class this season, it was difficult to consider Xavier anything other than favored to reach a third consecutive title game. But you really wondered if Pella shouldn't have had that favored tag going into this one.

The Dutch play defending champ Sioux City Heelan (12-1) in next week's 3A championship game. Xavier finishes 9-4.

'You guys saw that 3A's got some pretty good football. They do,” Xavier Coach Duane Schulte said. 'I've tried to say that, and it was proven tonight. It was proven in all three of our playoff games, proven during the regular season.”

Junior quarterback Noah Clayberg and his fleet feet make Pella's offense go, and he ran for 26 yards on the first play of the game. Talk about your harbingers.

On Pella's second possession, Clayberg faded back and connected with Will Warner over the middle for 25 yards. On the next play, he option pitched to running back Nathan Henry, who ran 15 yards for a touchdown.

Clayberg finished with 97 yards rushing on 21 attempts and completed 10 of 16 passes for 114 yards. He came in with over 2,400 rushing and passing yards.

'He's a great runner. We knew that,” said Xavier's Camden Stovie. 'Their running back (Henry), he's a great runner. We knew that we were going to have to stop the run if we were going to get the win tonight. Unfortunately we weren't able to do that until later in the game.”

Warner scored again on his team's ensuing possession, taking a sweep play right and turning the corner for eight yards. Xavier's defense stiffened after that, holding Pella out of the end zone the rest of the half despite continually being put in tough situations because of the offense's woes.

Seth Johnson made field goals of 27 and 37 yards to make it 20-0 Pella at halftime. Quinton Murphy's 1-yard TD plunge in the final minute of the third quarter made it a 27-point spread.

'They're really good. They're the real deal,” Schulte said. 'They've got big, fast, strong kids. Tough team.”

After three quarters, Xavier had but three yards of offense, a product of not being to rush or protect quarterback Bryce Schulte. Harassed all game long, the sophomore couldn't find time to get throws off or open receivers when he did have time.

Xavier finished with 60 yards, 40 coming on one play in the fourth quarter when Schulte hit Nick Stark on a go route. Naturally on this night, the Saints were on their 1-yard line at the time.

'A perfect game,” said Pella's linebacker Trevor Argo. 'We've got one more. You're never satisfied. We have a rise-up motto here.”

Meanwhile, this was an inauspicious ending for a Xavier team that was beaten up physically by the end of the season. The injured and unavailable included starting running back Jay Kortemeyer and fullback-linebacker Nic Ekland.

'Pretty special for this senior group to get to the Dome two years in a row,” Coach Schulte said. 'That doesn't happen very often. Some of them it was three years since they came up as sophomores in 2012. They've got nothing to hang their heads about.”

'It was definitely a successful season,” Stovie said. 'You get to the Dome, not many teams do that. Only four teams (in each class) do. It was a great feeling getting here, but we came up short of what we wanted, a state championship.”

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