State record in hand, Regals’ streak moves on to bigger things

IOWA CITY - Drew Cook admitted he has looked it up.

'I have, a while ago,” he said. 'But I don't know anymore. Are we second?”

He was asking about Iowa City Regina's place in the longest current high school football winning streaks in the nation. And yes, the Regals are tied for second with 56 consecutive wins.

Ithaca High School in Michigan is neck-and-neck with Regina, and Pahranagat Valley in Alamo, Nevada has won 69 straight games of eight-man football.

The Regals, loaded with returning talent, can enter even more rarified air beginning tonight in their season opener at Solon. A win would give them sole ownership of the state's longest-ever unbeaten streak (they already have the longest win

streak). If they are still undefeated after facing 4A finalist Cedar Rapids Xavier on Oct. 17, they will have moved into a three-way tie for the ninth-longest win streak in high school football history.

'That's exciting to know that kind of stuff,” Cook said. 'But right now we all have the attitude that we're 0-0. Tomorrow night someone's going to walk away 0-1.”

Cook said he has noticed a difference in practices this year: After the Regals won their fourth straight championship last season, setting the state win-streak record in the championship game, the players on the team stopped fixating on the streak. It has been around so long -- senior running back Jake Brinkman recalls watching the last Regina loss, against James Morris' Solon, as an eighth grader -- that it has become background noise.

'Honestly, we don't talk about it a lot,” Cook said. 'There was a point where we did, before last year's championship game. But I like where we're at right now. Just focusing.”

'A lot of these guys, it's their third year starting,” head coach Marv Cook said. 'These guys have played a lot of football. Everybody's just trying to find their niche, how they can help Regina football. Every year is distinctly different, and the focus now is on how good this year's team can be.”

It should be pretty good.

Drew Cook, a future Hawkeye, returns at quarterback after throwing for 22 touchdowns against just 3 interceptions last year. Jake Brinkman takes over as the featured back after scoring 13 times backing up Riley Dixon. The Regals aren't taking Solon lightly despite the graduation of all-district quarterback Jacob Black.

The Regals spent almost an hour at the end of practice on Thursday making sure they would have 11 players on the field in all their various formations, as Marv Cook warned players about how loud it would be on the Spartans' home field.

'We know how competitive the game's going to be,” he said. 'We know all those kids. You have to play intense, you have to play physical, you have to play well.”

Regina has done those things 56 times in a row. And even though the streak is no longer heavy in the players' minds, their coach wants to make sure they don't give it up easily.

'You have to enjoy it while you have it,” he said. 'Because you never know.”

l Comments: sam.louwagie@sourcemedia.net