After 13-year state tournament streak ended last year, Xavier girls’ soccer refocused

CEDAR RAPIDS - Foot resting on a soccer ball and a distant, serious look in his eye, Chris Higgins looks every bit a head soccer coach.

He has his Cedar Rapids Xavier girls' soccer team working on drills, just a bit of footwork. It's a Wednesday evening and this is a light practice. Thursday they'll pile into a bus and make the two-hour bus ride to Cownie Soccer Park to play ADM (17-2) in the state quarterfinals.

The Saints (12-4) are the fifth seed, the Tigers the fourth. It should be a good game, really. Higgins is expecting that. So is the team.

Xavier is a school that demands excellence from its athletic programs. Last year was not excellent. The Saints lost in the substate final, breaking a 13-year streak of getting to the state tournament. Nine of those times they've been crowned state champions.

Losing has a way of galvanizing people, but it also had another impact on the team.

'There was so much pressure on us the whole entire time and this year is a new beginning, a new start,” senior Addy Hoffman said. 'We can make our own name. There's no pressure on us anymore, no nine state championships.

'It's just us going out there. We have nothing to lose.”

Higgins is in his first year coaching the Saints and he's the third coach Hoffman and the other seniors have had in their time at the school. Last year's coach - Beth Samek - spent just two years coaching the team after she took over ahead of the 2015 season in place of Bailey Winter.

The turbulence has to have taken a toll, but it seems as if the Saints might finally have things figured out. As well as coaching Xavier, Higgins is a graduate assistant at Mount Mercy. He's wanted to be a coach since the end of his playing days at Ashford, formerly a school in Clinton.

This is his second job, with his first at DeWitt Central in 2015. He says the transition has gone smooth and things are moving in the right direction.

It certainly hasn't been difficult to get them to play hard.

'They were really motivated,” Higgins said. 'I didn't really have to do much of anything because they had that motivation to really go and get after it.”

He says his philosophy as a coach is fairly simple and wants his team to play a visually appealing version of soccer. Higgins wants them to score goals and defend.

Over the two substate games, his team gave up zero goals and scored 19. He might just be on to something.

Just one of the Saints' four losses was to a 2A school this season - to No. 2 seed North Scott, a team they would only see if both teams made it to the final.

There's excitement in the early summer air. The Saints are happy to be back.

l Comments: jordan.hansen@thegazette.com