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When rivals Iowa City Regina and West Liberty meet in boys’ state soccer tournament, the only question is the score
Jack Hoover rallies Regina with a pair of first-half goals to send Regina to the Class 1A state semifinals
DES MOINES — Jack Hoover hopped off the bench for a postgame interview Tuesday at Cownie Soccer Park with a scraped-up lower leg that revealed the intensity of the last 80 minutes.
The players and coaches involved could have expected that and just about everything else that happened in second-ranked Regina’s meeting with No. 5 West Liberty in the Class 1A boys’ state soccer quarterfinals.
The only question was going to be the final score. Hoover made the difference there, scoring a pair of goals in a four-minute first-half span to rally the Regals (18-4) to a 2-1 victory.
“No matter how the game started, we’re just going to stick to our game plan,” Hoover said. “We did, and we got two goals.”
The top two teams in the River Valley Conference, two of the top soccer programs in the state, stick to their identities. West Liberty plays out of the back, looking for passing sequences. Regina counters that with high pressure and waves of substitutes.
“It’s good and it’s bad because obviously we know each other’s tactics and and all the players,” Hoover said.
They knew Juan Mateo, West Liberty’s Class 1A-leading scorer, could find space for his 37th goal of the season. He did, in the 11th minute.
“I had no worries,” Regina captain Will Lipsius said of his mindset when that happened.
Less than eight minutes later, a turnover in the box gave Hoover a chance that he poked in. He got behind the defense again in the 22nd minute for the eventual game-winner.
A junior who has dealt with injuries throughout his career took his chances in Regina’s first year back since a 13-year state tournament streak was snapped last spring.
“He’s fearless, but not in an injurious sort of way that hinders himself,” Regina Coach Rick Larew said. “He doesn’t play out of control, he just plays hard and he practices hard and he runs his sprints hard and he runs long distances hard. He does everything hard. He’s just a great kid.”
Larew’s only request was for the sun to do the same.
“I really wanted to make (West Liberty) work harder,” Larew said. “I was hoping for about 10 more degrees of temperature. Maybe the only person here, because they don’t go as deep as we do.”
The Comets (15-3) withstood the pressure and had their chances to tie and book a fourth straight trip to the state semifinals. The equalizer never arrived, as Regina dealt them a second one-goal defeat this spring.
“I felt like we controlled a majority of the match,” West Liberty Coach Walton Ponce said. “We knew they were going to be aggressive, but I thought we did what we needed to do defensively to stop them and slow them down. Two little mistakes in that little span of time that they were able to absorb our pressure. The second half, they were nonexistent, in my opinion. But they were able to absorb the pressure and we couldn’t capitalize on a couple that we had.”
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