Xavier rolls past Independence-East Buchanan, 4-0

MUSCATINE - Neither rain nor gloom of day nor red cards could prevent Cedar Rapids Xavier from advancing to its next appointed round Thursday afternoon.

The Saints began their march toward a girls' state soccer six-peat with a dominating 4-0 win over Independence/East Buchanan in a Class 2A quarterfinal at a rainy Muscatine Soccer Complex.

It's on to the semifinals for top-ranked Xavier (17-2), which plays No. 5 Glenwood (17-1) at 4 p.m. Friday. It's not on to the semis for leading scorer Kayla Armstrong, however, though we'll get to that in a minute.

"That first half was extra rainy. It was kind of hard," said Xavier's Annie Dale, who collected a pair of goals. "The ball was slippery, everyone was kind of all over the place ... But, I mean, we can't really do anything about the weather. You've got to adjust to it."

And Xavier will have to adjust to being without Armstrong, who scored her 35th goal during a second-half barrage. The sophomore forward got into a skirmish with Indee's Taryn Tarpy with eight minutes left and pushed her while the two were tangled on the ground.

That drew a red card, automatic ejection and subsequent one-day suspension. That means she'll miss Xavier's semifinal and could potentially miss the championship game if Xavier gets that far and weather forces this tournament to shrink a day and double up its schedule.

Armstrong owned up to her mistake in an impressively mature way for a 10th grader.

"I let my emotions get the best of me," she said. "It was kind of selfish on my part to put myself before my team."

"She got punched in the back prior, maybe five minutes before she got sent out. But there's no excuse. Players cannot react that way," Xavier Coach Doug Graham said. "It's actually frustrating because our players know not to react that way. We hold ourselves to a high standard. We never like to see that kind of behavior."

Xavier outshot Indee by a whopping 37-5 margin, as it was essentially a shooting gallery against poor Mustangs goalkeeper Katelynn Miller. She was outstanding, preventing the spread from being significantly more.

Dale scored at the 12-minute mark, with Armstrong finally making it a multiple-goal spread with 11:35 left in the second. That opened the floodgates, as Dale and Kelsie Sargent added goals in the closing minutes.

"Created a lot of great opportunities," Graham said. "We didn't capitalize on all of them, but that's soccer sometimes. It runs that way sometimes."

Independence ended a historic season 15-3, with its first state tourney appearance all too brief.

"What did we learn from this? Stop chasing the ball," said Independence Coach Trish O'Loughlin. "Some of it was the environment. We've never experienced this before, and we don't normally play on a field this big."

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