Prep girls soccer: Linn-Mar Lions looking for redemption after last year’s heartbreaker

MARION - Last season everything went swimmingly for the Linn-Mar girls' soccer team until a Carly Langhurst run scored a goal with three minutes left in the Lions' regional final.

That goal sent Kennedy to the state tournament and left the Lions feeling like they'd been sucker punched.

'We were devastated, of course. Anybody going into that game would be,” goalie Rylie Frese said. 'But I think that made us that more motivated going into this year.”

The Lions ran the table in the regular season, winning 17 consecutive games. They won early at then No. 2-ranked Kennedy. They won late at No. 2 Bettendorf, the MAC champion. They won at eventual state runner-up Hempstead and beat seven of the eight Class 3A state qualifiers.

They won their first playoff and were 18-0.

But the Lions didn't qualify for the state tournament because they lost, 1-0, to eventual state champion Kennedy.

The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union didn't do the Lions any favors by putting Kennedy in the same bracket. The Cougars went through a series of injuries and lost six games, all to top teams. But by the time the playoffs rolled around the Cougars were ready, and the Lions had to hurdle an opponent much more powerful than their 18-0 record should have warranted.

'The pairings are the pairings,” Lions Coach Steve Dickinson said. 'You've got to play through the pairings. Kennedy had girls hurt and they all got well, and it was a completely different team than it was in the middle part of the year. And they also went through a coach switch.”

This wasn't a case of looking past an opponent nor a case of nerves afflicting a top-ranked, unbeaten team.

'We knew it would be a pretty tough one,” senior Emily Menges said. 'You could look at the game we played earlier against them. We just wanted to try and win.”

'It was a typical Kennedy-Linn-Mar game,” Dickinson said. 'We've had a one-goal game in the last four or five years. Both teams know each other. The girls play on club teams together.”

A loss like that, even to a veteran team with a lot of returning starters, could have cast a pall on the off-season and the start of this one, but it did not.

This is a team that understands it had a great season and simply lost a game on a great run. Soccer is by its very nature fickle because of the paucity of scoring. One goal often makes all the difference.

By the time of the postseason banquet the Lions understood what they had accomplished.

'It took a few days of us coming together to talk through how we all felt,” Menges said.

'We had a fantastic year, better than I've ever dreamed of in the regular season,” Dickinson said. 'You don't go undefeated in a regular season in a coaching career.

'We know from years of coaching that tournaments are completely different. Were we disappointed that we didn't get to state? Yes, but it didn't take away from just a fantastic year.”

That doesn't mean they aren't that much more motivated this season.

'They've had very determined practices,” Dickinson said. 'But they're still having fun.”

With nearly a full roster returning - including four all-state players in Olivia Garcia, Jensen Sevening, Frese and Claire Larson - the Lions will likely be ranked exactly where they were at the end of last season.

'We're a marked team this year. We know it,” Dickinson said. 'In the Mississippi Valley you've got to play every night. All of the teams are strong.”

As if they needed reminding.