Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

A college football Saturday filled with big-time games or top-25 matchups always seems to come with a catchy slogan.

Something like ‘Separation Saturday’.

If week four of the high school football season in the Your Prep Sports area came complete with millions of dollars of marketing money it would be deserving of its own made for television name.

Instead, Your Prep Sports has me and the best I could come up with off the top of my head is ‘Figure It Out Friday’ which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

And one of the premier matchups is a Thursday night game anyway so that’s off the table.

For the purposes of this column we’ll stick with ‘Week 4’ but regardless of what you call this week’s slate of games it is loaded with biggies for area teams.

West Des Moines Dowling at City High.

Solon at Davenport Assumption.

Mediapolis at Regina.

Clear Creek Amana at Liberty High.

This is as intriguing of a list of matchups as any I can recall in six seasons of covering prep football for Your Prep Sports.

The coolest part of this coming week for me is what the area teams have done over the past three weeks to set up this week that will have eyes from across the state on teams in the Your Prep Sports area.

This column is supposed to be a look back at the previous week, hence the name, and even though it is difficult not to starting looking ahead to week four it is what happened in week three that sets up perhaps the best week of games ever in the Your Prep Sports area.

City High continued its impressive start smothering Ames 43-5 in the Little Cy-Hawk game to improve to 3-0 and set up the biggest regular season game for the Little Hawks in several seasons.

The Little Hawks were dominant defensively again, scoring a pair of defensive touchdowns while failing to allow a touchdown for the third consecutive game.

The opponents for City High this season are a combined 1-8 and the level of difficulty takes a significant step up the next two weeks starting with a showdown against perennial power West Des Moines Dowling (1-2) on Friday.

Dowling (1-2) is the unquestioned gold standard of big school football in Iowa.

The Maroons are 95-8 over the past five seasons and won a state-record seven consecutive 4A titles from 2013 to 2019.

Dowling went 8-2 a year ago, losing to eventual state champ Ankeny in the semis. The Maroons are off to a 1-2 start with losses to top-ranked Southeast Polk (14-7) and Ankeny (27-13) last week.

Regardless of records this game is one of the most intriguing state-wide on Friday and will be among the most anticipated games for City High in a long, long time.

Solon (3-0) pulled away late for a 28-14 win over Williamsburg to set up a week-four, 3A Thursday evening showdown with Davenport Assumption.

This game is all about opportunity for the Spartans.

A win and Solon is likely looking at an unbeaten regular season with sets the Spartans up well for a postseason run.

Clear Creek Amana (2-1) got back on track with a 48-13 win over Washington on Friday in a game that was more lopsided than I anticipated.

The Clippers take on Liberty High (0-3) in a rivalry game on Friday.

Regina (3-0) was off last week, earning a forfeit win over Mid-Prairie and the Regals open district play on Friday by hosting unbeaten Mediapolis (3-0) in what could be its toughest remaining test in the regular season.

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