Notre Dame-West Burlington boys soccer team headed back to the Iowa state tournament
The Notre Dame-West Burlington high school boys soccer team simply would not be denied a return trip to state.
Not the loss of six graduated seniors from last year. Not a tornado warning, which delayed the start of Wednesday's Class 1A substate final against Columbus/Winfield-Mount Union by nearly a half-hour. Not moving the match from the Nikes' home field at Tackleson Field to the FunCity Turf because of weather conditions. And not the Wildcats, who played a stellar defensive game against the Nikes.
No, nothing would deny the Nikes a return trip to the state tournament, which they earned with a 5-0 win over the Wildcats.
Notre Dame-West Burlington (17-3), the eight seed, will play top seed Western Christian (15-1) in a Class 1A state quarterfinal match at noon on June 1 at the Cownie Soccer Complex in Des Moines.
Columbus/Winfield-Mount Union bows out with a 12-6 record.
The Nikes simply would not be denied a chance to defend their state championship.
"It’s going to be pretty tremendous in terms of difficulty of shots I will face, especially against Assumption and Beckman and Western Christian," said ND-WB senior goalkeeper Arya Nowroozi, who stopped the lone shot he faced against the Wildcats.
“I’m excited, but the real goal is to win it again," said ND-WB senior midfielder Carson Wagner, who scored the Nikes' third goal.
“I’m ready. We’ve got three more games in us and hopefully all wins," said ND-WB senior midfielder Parker Davis, who leads the state with 46 assists.
“It feels good, but I’m not getting excited until we keep going. I’m not getting my hopes up yet. I want to keep going," said ND-WB senior defenseman Aidan Krell, who had an assist.
“It’s not expected that we would go," ND-WB head coach John Wagner said. "You never expect. The plan was always can we get to state? Now what we’re going to do is see if we can do some damage. We’re playing at a very high level, probably the best we have played, the last two games. It’s going to be interesting to see who we get paired with.”
Columbus/W-MU, which lost to the Nikes, 8-0, earlier in the season, had the perfect game plan. Knowing his team couldn't match the Nikes' offensive firepower, Columbus/W-MU head coach Luis Cacho had his team sit back in a defensive shell, man-mark the Nikes and hope to break out on an occasional counter attack.
“We’re still defending first. We are trying to build up our attack from the back. We are trying to play defense. Give credit to Notre Dame. They have a good team," Cacho said. “That’s a very powerful team. We tried to play defense and wait for our opportunity. That’s what we did. But again, when you score five goals, that is very good. We are happy with the boys. We came all the way up here and performed well. We can do better, but we just have to get ready for next year.”
ND-WB used patience, possession and the width of the field to create space to score the first goal. Cole Ward scored on a nifty feed from Gabe Zurita for what proved to be the game-winning goal in the ninth minute.
“I would say that Luis had them very organized. You could see that they have been working on that," Wagner said. "The challenge was can the guys figure it out on the go? They did a really good job of getting the ball wide and then attacking that space.”
“We needed to move the ball and create good, solid chances in order to get through their defensive line. They are really strong there," Carson Wagner said. “We just had to be patient to get those goals. It took a while to get that first one. The patience helps. We just have to stay calm and know that we have to get more.”
Carson Wagner made it a 2-0 game 13 minutes later when he boomed a shot past goalkeeper Adan Martinez.
With just over a minute before halftime, Ward gave the Nikes some breathing room when he tapped in a pass from Zurita to give the Nikes a 3-0 lead.
“That first goal meant a lot," Coach Wagner said. "Once you get that first one it makes it more difficult for them. Then we got that second goal, which was huge. That really put them on their heels. But two-zero can all of a sudden become 2-1. When we got the third goal you could see the deflation. That’s natural. I felt like at that point we had it. It was a matter of can we continue to play well? And we did.”
From there it was all the Nikes' defense as they limited the Wildcats to just one shot on net, than coming on a free kick from 55 yards in the first half.
“We were not expected to get this far. It’s our goal when we start the season to get to the final, but we were not expected to get there. Notre Dame played a good game and they beat us," Cacho said.
“It feels really good. This was a very difficult challenge. It’s exactly what we needed, honestly. They played very sound defense. Their shape was great. They made It really challenging," Coach Wagner said.
Matt Levins is a sports reporter for the USA TODAY Network in Burlington, Iowa, who has covered local sports for 31 years. Reach him at mlevins@thehawkeye.com.
Notre Dame-West Burlington 5, Columbus/W- 0
C/W-MU 0 0 — 0
ND-WB 3 2 — 5
Scoring summary
ND-WB — 31:32 first half, Cole Ward from Gabe Zurita. ND-WB — 18:18 first half, Carson Wagner unassisted. ND-WB — 1:02 first half, Ward from Zurita. ND-WB — 34:26 second half, Davis unassisted. ND-WB — 8:37 second half, Wyatt Pearson from Aidan Krell.
MATCH STATISTICS
C. ND-WB
Shots. 1. 24
Saves. 5. 1
Fouls. 5. 9
Offsides 0. 1
Free kicks. 10 6
Corner kicks. 0. 5
Penalty kicks. 0. 0
Goal kicks. 34. 3
Yellow cards. 0 1
Red cards. 0. 0
Records: Columbus/Winfield-Mount Union 12-6, Notre Dame-West Burlington 17-3.
This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Notre Dame-West Burlington boys soccer returning to state tournament
