City High ends comeback season at Bettendorf

BETTENDORF - Coming into 2015, the Iowa City High football team wanted to make amends.

An uncharacteristic 2014 saw the Little Hawks finish 2-7 and miss the Class 4A playoffs. This season even started out looking like last year, with some key injuries - including to starting quarterback Nate Weiland - and a 44-7 Week 2 loss to No. 2 Bettendorf.

And though the rematch with the Bulldogs wasn't much better in terms of a final score, the Little Hawks finished 2015 with eight wins and miles ahead of where they left off in 2014 - even in a 31-7 state quarterfinal loss.

'You come down here and play an undefeated team on their field, in a quarterfinal - there's a lot of good football teams that went home tonight,” said City High Coach Dan Sabers. 'It's just the way playoff football is. To play all those games in a short amount of time and all our games are battles, it's a lot of football.

'This was about the character of our seniors. They were determined. Our seniors set the tone of how hard we were going to work and how hard we'd compete. I think that's the main thing - the character.”

After 24 minutes of football Friday night, it looked as if the Little Hawks (8-4) were capable of the upset of a Bulldogs team that's on its way to the UNI-Dome for the third straight year, finishing the first half tied, 7-7.

But any positive offense from the first half was snuffed out in the second by Bettendorf, which sacked City High quarterback Jared Taylor seven times total and four in the second half. The Little Hawks were held to minus-11 total yards in the final two quarters, the Bulldogs buried the game on the ground and there wasn't much Sabers or his team could do about it.

'Their defense really got after our linemen,” Sabers said. 'It was pretty clear (early) we weren't going to have much success running the ball, so they were able to tee off on our pass protection. They were better than us up front, and that's going to show up eventually. We were hanging on for dear life and eventually that's going to show up. That's kind of what happened.”

There was sadness on the City High sideline after the game, sure, but definitely no disappointment. The Little Hawks coaches and players - as Sabers said - knew the caliber of the team that beat them at A.R. TouVelle Stadium.

Taylor had no time for much of the night, and finished 10 of 25 for 125 yards, one touchdown and one interception. The junior was one among a group Sabers lauded, in addition to the seniors, for what they brought to this team.

What Sabers hopes guys like Taylor - and Weiland, when he returns from injury - do going forward is use the experiences of the last two years and make good out of it. The future is bright, after all, with 29 underclassmen returning in 2016.

'I hope they learned this senior class was 1-8 as freshmen, didn't do that well as sophomores and then went 2-7 - which is pretty unheard of for us,” Sabers said. 'And then they rallied the troops and got all together and did some good things. Obviously we do bring a lot of kids back, and if they bring the same character and things like that - and I think they will - we'll be excited about where we'll go. This is a springboard to where we want to be.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com