Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Jose Fajardo wasn’t thrilled with the way his City High soccer team performed in the first half against Dubuque Hempstead on Thursday.

The long-time Little Hawk head coach saw plenty of areas for improvement after the opening 40 minutes.

“We were not being sharp in the first half,” Fajardo said. “We were not beating players in one-v-ones, we were not keeping possession in the final third and we were losing unnecessary balls.”

There was no stern halftime talk from Fajardo who instead opted for an instructional discussion after the teams played to a 1-1 draw in the opening half.
Whatever Fajardo told his team at halftime the Little Hawks were listening.

City High scored four unanswered second-half goals and rolled to a 5-1 win over Class 4A tenth-ranked Dubuque Hempstead (10-2) on a sunny and breezy afternoon in Iowa City.

“It was a very soft talk about understanding the one thing they were doing it was working for them and few things we were doing were not working for us,” Fajardo said of his halftime speech.

Freshman Taylor Salinas and junior Josh Borger Germann scored goals in the opening four minutes of the second half as City High snapped a seven-game winning streak for Hempstead.

City High tacked on two more second-half goals while improving to 7-0 on the season with its fifth match this season with four or more goals.

“We just knew we could play better, we wanted to go out and show them what we could do,” freshman Seth Zeithamel said. “We knew what we were capable of and we came out and showed it.”

City High took a 1-0 lead when Noe Semabia ripped a straight away shot into the back of the net with 11:35 remaining in the opening half.

Dubuque Hempstead drew even when senior Drew Lewis scored on a penalty kick with 2:35 left in the opening half.

City High quickly took control of the game in the second half.

Salina put the Little Hawks back in front with a goal just 90 seconds into the second.

“Coach said I needed to go on one-on-one with players on the other side,” Salinas said. “It worked.”

Borger Germann followed with a goal a little more than two minutes later to give the Little Hawks a 3-1 cushion.

“We talked at halftime that needed to take care of the ball and keep possession and we wanted to get the ball in the wide areas and get in the box,” Zeithamel said. “We got it out wide to Taylor and he scored a great goal, we got it to Jonah who crossed it to Josh for a header. We just wanted to use our width and keep the ball.”

City High put the game out of reach with a pair of late goals.

Jackson Nichols-Lindsey scored with 22 minutes remaining and Jayden Le capped the scoring with a goal with 4:20 to play.

City High has now scored at least four goals in its last three games and has 30 goals in seven matches.

“We have a lot of players that are a threat, a lot of players,” Fajardo said. “That is really going to help us as we play better teams and we have more space.”

The win over Dubuque Hempstead was the first over a ranked opponent for the Little Hawks this season.

City High hosts Cedar Rapids Prairie (4-5) and third-ranked Waukee Northwest (7-2) on Saturday.

“I know the team that I have and I know that we can compete against anybody in the state,” Fajardo said. “Are we going to win all the games? Most likely not it’s part of the game sometimes we win sometimes we lose but I know we can compete against anybody in the state.”

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