West Des Moines Dowling overpowers Iowa City Liberty for Class 5A state football title

CEDAR FALLS — Let’s look at it this way.

Making the playoffs has been accomplished. So has making it to the playoff semifinals.

Advancing to a championship game? Been done.

So the next logical step for the Iowa City Liberty football program has got to be finishing it off and winning it all. If anyone on this side of the state seems positioned to end the suburban Des Moines biggest-school championship run, it’s the Lightning.

Those dreams will have to wait at least another year as top-ranked West Des Moines Dowling (12-1) made it 16 straight champs from the capital city ‘burbs Friday night via a 27-10 win over No. 3 Liberty in the Class 5A title game at the UNI-Dome.

It’s Dowling’s 11th championship, the first since it won seven straight from 2013 to 2018. The last Eastern Iowa winner in the biggest class is Iowa City High in 2009.

“Just so proud of our guys for what they did,” said Liberty Coach Scott Chandler. “An undersized group, scrappy is a good way to describe them. We scrapped our way all the way to the state championship game.

“I think we’ll get some time and perspective to look back and (appreciate what we did). But right now it’s pretty raw.”

Liberty (11-2) beat three straight suburban Des Moines schools to get to this game: Waukee, Southeast Polk and second-ranked Waukee Northwest. It also beat Southeast Polk in the regular season.

But this task proved just too tough ... literally.

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The Lightning knew they would have to stop, or at least slow down, Dowling’s run game, and that just didn’t happen. The Maroons went heavy regularly offensively with two tight ends and feeds to running back Ian Middleton, all 5-foot-9 and 215 pounds of him.

Middleton rushed 34 times for 206 yards and two touchdowns, despite Liberty committing nine guys to the box much of the time. Liberty’s corners played press coverage with no safety help.

It only really burned the Lightning once, that in the third quarter when Joey Nahas hit a slant pass to Jeffrey Roberts, with the latter breaking a shoestring-tackle attempt and scoring on a 67-yard touchdown pass. That gave the Maroons a 24-3 lead.

“We knew that they were going to try and run it down our throats,” Liberty linebacker Landon Bell said. “I mean, it was a fun game (that way), just getting down in there and getting bloody and dirty and getting to fight ... Obviously they executed their stuff.”

Nahas attempted only five passes in the game, completing three.

“They got after us, that’s what it was,” Chandler said. “They had a powerful offensive line and a powerful back, and they took advantage of that. We were basically having to play Cover-0 to try and get enough guys in the box to do it.”

Liberty’s high-powered offense couldn’t quite do enough against a Dowling defense that came in as 5A’s stingiest, the Maroons allowing just 7.6 points per game. Liberty averaged 36.9 points offensively.

It did not help that superb senior quarterback Reece Rettig reinjured his right leg in the second quarter and missed about the last half of it. Rettig came into the game with 3,268 yards of combined rushing and receiving.

Rettig, who returned to play the second half, finished his outstanding career completing 18 of 25 passes for 139 yards and a third-quarter touchdown to Adrian Clerry.

“They’re big, they tackled well,” Rettig said. “Their D-coordinator put them in the greatest spots possible. He called a great game against us.”

Backup QB Harrison Berner did a very admirable job of filling in for Rettig, completing 8 of 12 passes for 54 yards and leading Liberty to a field goal by Collin Weis (of 39 yards) on the final play of the first half. That brought the Lightning within 10-3.

A 28-yard Middleton touchdown run to open the second half, a Liberty punt and the Nahas-to-Robert TD ended any suspense.

“It just sucks going all this way and losing,” Rettig said. “We got every single practice possible, we tried to take everything out of the season that we could. One bad day. It sucks, but we just wanted to leave the program in a better place.”

No doubt Liberty’s seniors did that. With a number of guys coming back next season, especially at the skill positions, the future for the Lightning looks promising.

Perhaps state championship promising.

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(At UNI-Dome)

West Des Moines Dowling 7 3 14 7-27

Iowa City Liberty 0 3 0 7-10

Team Statistics

First Downs — Liberty 17, Dowling 14. Rushes-Yards — Liberty 23-33, Dowling 39-246. Passing — Liberty 27-38-1-195, Dowling 3-5-0-81. Total Yards — Liberty 228, Dowling 327. Punts-Average — Liberty 2-41.5, Dowling1-21.0. Penalties-Yards — Liberty 6-55, Dowling 5-40. Fumbles-Lost — Liberty 2-1, Dowling 1-1.

Individual Statistics

Iowa City Liberty — Rushing: Brody Beaver 9-60, Jordan Schroeder 2-6, Cooper Lester 1-1, Reece Rettig 11-(minus) 34. Passing: Reece Rettig 18-25-1-139. Receiving: Adrian Clerry 6-66, Brody Beaver 7-42, Jordan Schroeder 5-30, Cooper Lester 4-21, Pryor Reiners 3-18, Tate Rettig 2-18.

Dowling — Rushing: Ian Middleton 34-206, Joey Nahas 2-22, Grayson Penning 3-18. Passing: Joey Nahas 3-5-0-81. Receiving: Jeffrey Roberts 1-67, Sam Drexler 1-11, Ian Middleton 1-3.

Comments: (319)-398-8258, jeff.johnson@thegazette.com