Iowa City Regina boys’ soccer bounces back after rare losing season

IOWA CITY — For the last 15 years, the Iowa City Regina boys’ soccer program has been the model of consistency in Class 1A.

From 2008-2021, the Regals made 13 consecutive state tournament appearances, with eight championships sandwiched between 2009 and 2019.

Yet, there’s something special about the 2023 team that longtime coach Rick Larew hasn’t seen before.

“We have not yet had a bad practice all season,” Larew said. “We have not had a single day we have to say, ‘guys, let’s not do that again.’

“I've never had this before. I've never gotten this far in the season. Usually, we get to this part of the season, and we'll talk about, ‘hey, it's not happening.’ … We've not had a single bad day of practice. We've not had a single blow-up.”

The 1A No. 2-rated Regals (14-4) currently sit atop the River Valley Conference standings with an 10-0 conference record.

“It’s been a unique year,” Larew said. “They're just some of the nicest, most coachable kids you can imagine. They work hard, and there's not a ‘but’ to that.”

Regina is looking to bounce back after missing the state tournament last season for the first time since 2007.

“Last year was a tough year for us,” Larew said. “We had a lot of growing up to do. The last year was a year that I would say the tough schedule we played year after year sort of caught up with this.”

The Regals finished 10-12 in 2022, but brought back several key players, including senior midfielder Will Lipsius.

“There's definitely a lot of passion from everyone,” Lipsius said. “It's feeling like a need to come back, not just a want or anything. We need to come back to state, and everyone shows the exact same way on the team.”

Larew said this year’s senior class has lived up to the promise they made at the close of the 2022 season.

“We took our lumps last season,” Larew said. “I said to the seniors-to-be right after the end of the season last year, ‘are you all in or not? Are we going to make a go of it?’ And they all committed to it, and they’ve kept their word. They're really great kids. And they’ve worked hard.”

“I was confident from the very beginning that our team could show up, and we've had a lot of good freshmen come out and be able to play,” Lipsius said. “The way our team has just had our chemistry all come together. Everyone's been playing super well together. We've been able to move people around easily, and we've been making a lot of things able to work.”

Offensively, moving people around and staying balanced is part of the Regals’ game plan.

While Regina doesn’t have a single player with double-digit goals scored, it has four players with at least eight, and 15 who’ve scored.

“It's a system scoring approach,” Larew said. “We’re not built around a scorer. It's a system in terms of how we approach it. We try to bring it to the outside, crossing inside, and the people are moving, and the idea is that we don't really have a single person who scores for us.”

“All of our guys have been growing up and getting a lot better at what they are doing,” Lipsius said. “Like Quinn Warren, he’s shown out a lot. He's been putting really good balls in and scoring. And Kyle Evans is really out of his mind recently. Eddie Petersen also been playing great. It's just everyone being able to finally come together and be big enough to play.”

While the offense is balanced, defense is the driving force for 2023 Regals.

Regina has given up just 13 goals this season.

“We're very strong from the back end, and we've got a couple of real good goalies,” Larew said. “Two of our best players are our defensive mids, so we're a pretty solid team defensively.”

Regina earned the 1-seed in its substate that includes 1A No. 16 Dyersville Beckman, Clinton Prince of Peace, Monticello, Tipton and Highland.

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“It’s definitely not going to be easy,” Lipsius said. “Beckman's good, Prince of Peace is good. It'll be interesting. It is one of the better substates. We just have to come out, play the way we do and keep up our tempo.”

The Regals know what’s on the line in substate play — a chance to restart a state tournament streak.

“Everyone wants to make it a state,” Lipsius said. “That's, of course, the goal for everyone. But if we just go out there and play as hard as we can, leave it all out on the field, there’s not much more I can ask.”