City High blows past West Des Moines Dowling early

DES MOINES - On a day when the weather had virtually everything but lightning, Iowa City High provided it anyway.The Little Hawks scored three times in the first half and went on to a 3-1 win over West Des Moines Dowling in a Class 3A state soccer quarterfinal at windy, rainy, soggy, sometimes miserable Cownie Park.City High (16-2) got its goals (from Luke Mennen, Fernando Pacheco and Peter Larsen) in the first half of the first half, actually. That's always the game plan, of course, but even more so on a day like this, according to coach Jose Fajardo."Not knowing what the weather was going to be, they warned us about the possibility that if the game couldn't continue and we played the first half, the game might be over," Fajardo said. "So we had to win the first half because you never know what could happen. Our players came to play, and we took care of things."This was such a different result from a year ago for second-seeded City High, which, as a No. 3 seed, dropped its quarterfinal to West Des Moines Valley, 1-0."We came out really motivated," said Mennen, who beat a couple of defenders and let go with a bullet shot that went into the side of the net five minutes in. "I think everyone had in the back of their heads what happened last year. We wanted to make sure we didn't do that again. We just put our chances away.""You have to learn from what happened," Fajardo said. "We were the better team last year, the more dominant team, the team with more chances. But the mistakes we made (cost them the game). That's part of the sport. The other team is going to take advantage of that. We didn't want to let that happen this year."They definitely didn't. Pacheco pretty much put things away with his goal, which came a minute after Mennen's.Larsen scored 14 minutes later. Dowling (12-5) had the lone goal of the second half.City High plays third-seeded Johnston (19-1) in a 5:05 semifinal Friday afternoon.