Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Anne Larew stressed to her Regina soccer team all week the importance of setting the tone early in its postseason opener.

Even with all the reminders Larew offered in regards to a strong start not even she could have pictured what Regina would do in its Class 1A, Substate 7 quarterfinal on Wednesday.

Grace Gaarde scored the first of her three goals just 54 seconds into the match as Regina rolled to a 4-0 win over West Branch (5-9) on a sunny afternoon at Regina.

“We told them to go out and take control of the game from the first minute,” Larew said. “I wasn’t expecting it to literally be the first minute so that was a pleasant surprise but you could tell that they were ready to play.”

Gaarde scored twice in the opening 14 minutes as Regina (8-7) built a 3-0 halftime lead while advancing to the regional semifinals.

Regina will host Bellevue Marquette (10-3) on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Region 7 semifinals after

Bellevue Marquette defeated Northeast 5-0 on Wednesday.

“We haven’t had our team together much this year and that’s made it harder but we all played really well this game,” Gaarde said. “We came out and worked hard together and really connected a lot this game and hopefully we can bring that on to the next game and I know we are going to do well.”

Gaarde helped Regina set the tone early on Wednesday.

The sophomore forward took a cross from senior Annie Gahan and slipped a past shot West Branch goalie Iva Senio less than a minute into the match.

“We really work on the first five minutes of the game and the last five minutes,” Gaarde said. “The first five minutes of both halves we want to give everything that we’ve got and try to go and it worked really well, I got lucky and it went it.”

Gaarde made it 2-0 just 14 minutes in when she took a feed from Natalie Franklin and slotted a left-footed shot into the lower right corner from just inside the box.

“It was exactly what we emphasized,” Larew said. “We said what happens in the first five minutes of the game will set the tone for the game and that absolutely did.”

Gahan gave Regina a 3-0 halftime lead when she scored on off an Alli Clark feed with just 3:26 left in the first half.

It was the ninth goal of the season for Gahan, a first-year player for the Regals.

“Annie has been such a great player for us this year and has never really played soccer before this year expect when she was a really little,” Gaarde said. “She came out and is giving it her all. She is super fast and a great athlete and her soccer has gotten so much better.”

Gaarde completed the hat trick with a goal with 16:55 left off a feed from Clark.

The sophomore upped her team-leading goal total to 25 with the three goals on Wednesday all of which came on an assist from a different player.

“It’s really a credit to our girls to how well they played together,” Larew said. “We have had very few times that we’ve been able to practice and we had a couple of times this week that we really worked on playing as a team and you could tell. They played off each other, they communicated with each other in a way that had been difficult to do before.”

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