Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Liberty High spent a year waiting for a rematch following a 41-0 loss to City High last fall.

Well, almost a year.

“They came out and got after us last year and it’s been 364 days of being an elephant and not forgetting,” Liberty High coach James Harris said.

Liberty High didn’t forget last year’s season-opening loss and when they got their shot at redemption in a historic prep football game on Friday the Lightning didn’t miss.

Playing the first prep game at Kinnick Stadium in more than 40 years Liberty High scored on its first two drives of each half and never trailed in an emphatic 36-19 win over City High in front of a crowd of approximately 10,000.

“Last year, that was hard, that wasn’t going to happen again,” Liberty High senior Trey Gregoire said. “We studied their defense and we thought we had the perfect game plan for the and we showed up today.”

Junior quarterback Graham Beckman passed for 236 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 43 yards and another score in his first career start as Liberty High won for the third time in the past four years against City High.

Beckman led back-to-back touchdown drives on the first two Liberty High possessions of the second half as the Lightning outscored City High 13-0 after halftime.

“It was crazy coming out here we wanted to get a win and beat our cross-town rivals,” Beckman said. “We came out with a win tonight and I’m just proud of my guys.”
Last season City High controlled virtually every aspect of the game from the outset in a season-opening 41-0 win at Liberty High.

There wasn’t the lopsided score that there was last season but Liberty High controlled the game from the opening kickoff on Friday.

Liberty High forced three turnovers, had a nearly 50-yard edge in rushing yards and held City High scoreless for the final two quarters while winning the season opener for just the second time in program history.

“A lot of credit to those guys,” City High coach Mitch Moore said. “Their coaches had a great game plan, they played with tremendous energy and they took advantages of big momentum plays and they played a better football game than us there is no other way to put it.”

Liberty High showed on the opening possession of the game Friday wouldn’t be a replay of last season’s meeting.

Beckman led an 11-play, 81-yard touchdown drive in which he converted a pair of third downs with completions of 12 yards to Lucas Meyer and nine yards to Christian Barney.

“That is one of the most important drives of the game,” Trey Gregoire said. “You start out with a boom and you show them you can compete with them. After that it doesn’t matter about the rankings or anything else.”

Beckman capped the drive with his first career touchdown pass, a 40-yard strike to senior Garrett Gregoire just more than four minutes into the game.

“Graham Beckman is a special kid and I think we all saw it tonight,” Harris said. “He’s a workhorse. He’s a big, strong athletic kid and he got his opportunity and he seized it.”

The Liberty High defense forced City High to go three-and-out on its first two possessions and City High took a 9-0 lead on a 37-yard field goal by Hayden Saul.

The teams traded body blows in a back-and-forth second quarter.

Drew Larson tossed touchdown passes of 80 yards to Akili Mattox and 81 yards to Ronnie Major and scored on 7-yard run with 1:14 left in the second quarter that cut what was once a 23-6 Lightning lead to 23-19 at the half.

It was all Lightning after halftime.

City High started the second half with the ball and moved into Lightning territory before a holding call bogged down the drive.

“I really thought we got everybody back in control coming out at half and we had that drive stall out on a 15-yard penalty and you felt the wind out of our sails at that point,” Moore said. “I don’t know why that was.”

Liberty High responded with the drive of the game, a 19-play, 92-yard touchdown march that took more than seven minutes off the clock and ended with a 4-yard scoring flip from Beckman to Barney.

“We came out with a lot energy,” Barney said. “That is what won it for us tonight. We came out big right away.”

Garrett Gregoire recovered a fumble on the ensuing City High possession and on the first Liberty High play Beckman hit Dallas Miller on a 50-yard bomb to the Little Hawk 3 yard line.

Three plays later Beckman found Ethan Neels all alone in the endzone to give Liberty High a 36-19 lead.

“Coming out with a big win against City High I think it will really help us going forward,” Beckman said. “This is big for us going ahead.”

A year after allowing 240 rushing yards and 7.5 yards per carry in a loss to the Little Hawks Liberty High held City High to 89 yards rushing on 25 carries on Friday.

The Lightning recovered two fumbles and picked off a pass late.

“We were just clogging up the gaps,” Barney said. “We came ready on defense.”

Larson finished 18-of-24 passing for 298 yards and two touchdowns and also ran for a score to lead City High.

Gregoire ran for 73 yards for Liberty High and Wyatt Williams returned a kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown.

                                                    ICH                ICL

First downs                            14                      21

Rushes-yards                        25-89               43–138

Comp-Att-Int                         18-29-1            16-23-0

Passing yards                        298                    236

Total yards                              387                    374

Punts-avg                                3-32                  2-27

Fumbles-lost                          3-2                     2-1

Penalties-yards                      10-100              8-55

City High                   0  19  0  0  –  19

Liberty High             9  14  6  7  –  36

ICL – Garrett Gregoire 40 pass from Graham Beckman (pass failed)

ICL – Hayden Saul 39 field goal

ICH – Akili Mattox 80 pass from Drew Larson (kick failed)

ICL – Wyatt Williams 92 kick off return (Saul kick)

ICL – Beckman 10 run (Saul kick)

ICH – Ronnie Major 81 pass from Larson (Thomas Ksobiech kick)

ICH – Larson 7 run (run failed)  

ICL – Christian Barney 4 pass from Beckman (kick failed)

ICL – Ethan Neels 1 pass from Beckman (Saul kick)

Individual statistics

RUSHING – ICH: Ben Kueter 7-31, Ronnie Major 5-20, Drew Larson 7-18, Carsen Newton 2-19, Quinton Tran 2-3, Holdon Clay 1-3, Team 1-(-5). ICL: Trey Gregoire 13-73, Graham Beckman 19-43, #23 9-31, Team 2-(-9).

PASSING – ICH: Drew Larson 18-24-1 298, Quinton Tran 0-4-0 0. ICL: Graham Beckman 16-23-0 236.

RECEIVING – ICH: Carsen Newton 5-32, Oliver Kniss 4-50, Akili Mattox 2-95, Ronnie Major 2-95, Ben Kueter 2-7, Evan Lampe 1-10, Dax Judge 1-7, Kael Kurtz 1-2. ICL: Christian Barney 5-56, Garrett Gregoire 3-55, Lucas Meyer 3-28, Amari Thigpen 2-37, Dallas Miller 1-50, Trey Gregoire 1-9, Ethan Neels 1-1.

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