Cedar Rapids Washington defeats defending champion Iowa City West in shootout thriller

CEDAR RAPIDS - On a night when the wind and rain created abstract tapestries under the lights of Kingston Stadium, only the hardiest of players and fans survived a chilly double-overtime shootout.

Senior goalkeeper Gunnar Lenzen made two saves during the shootout and kicked in the first penalty kick himself as Washington defeated defending state champion Iowa City West, 2-1 (4-2 PK), Thursday night.

'I was pretty confident; I like being in those situations,” Lenzen said. 'I've done it against West before.”

Making a kick himself was a bit different, though.

'I haven't done it for the high school team,” he said. 'We were doing it for our tournament last week though and (Coach J.P.) Graham said, ‘Gunnar you're going to go first?' And I said ‘yeah.'”

The Warriors made all four of their penalty kicks with Lenzen, Andrew Hammer, Connor Geuder and Aroni Niyakiza doing the honors. Lenzen saved two of the four Trojan PKs.

'We missed three out of four on Saturday,” Graham said.

'We practiced PKs after Muscatine, so we spent time working on that,” Geuder said. 'It was amazing; it felt great.”

After a scoreless first half in which West was clearly the aggressor, Washington made several runs and had more players forward in the second half.

'At halftime coach told us to go into the 50-50 balls harder just playing Wash soccer like we always do, sort of fearless,” Lenzen said.

'We kind of stuck with the same game plan, but our kids didn't have much experience,” Graham said. 'Now they've been out there for four games, and it started to click. Once I got the defense figured out we started knocking the ball around and started to act like we knew how to pass. That kind of put West back on their heels a bit and gave us some opportunities.”

'The two forwards and outside mids, we just kept sending them up,” Geuder said.

The Warriors scored first on a free kick from 26 yards out by Geuder with 30 minutes left in the half.

But West responded immediately and scored in the next minute off a corner kick.

The kick went into the box and Lenzen fisted it away but not far enough. Alex Andersen knocked it in and West had the equalizer.

'I didn't get great contact on it,” Lenzen said. 'It fell right to their guy.”

Lenzen was otherwise magnificent and made several outstanding saves through the 100 minutes of play.

'We were just one touch away in the final third,” West Coach Brad Stiles said. 'We couldn't get the clean shot off. Their keeper picked one out of the corner. It was maybe a game we should have put away and we didn't.”

Washington is 2-2 and 1-0 in MVC play. West is 2-2, 0-1.