Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Playing five games in four days with three matchups against ranked opponents is as challenging of a stretch of schedule as Regina will face all season.

After a disappointing home loss to Dyersville Beckman last Wednesday the five-game in four-day stretch proved to be exactly what the Regals needed.

Class 1A second-ranked Regina closed its busy stretch 5-0 with a 3-1 win over Mid-Prairie on Monday in a River Valley Conference South Division contest in Iowa City.

“We lost that game (last week) and we had a quick turnaround which I think helped us mentally,” Petersen said. “We knew we had to move on.”

Regina never led in a 3-2 loss to Dyersville Beckman last week.

The Regals haven’t trailed in any of their five wins since last week’s loss to the Blazers.

“We just sat down after that loss and had a heart-to-heart talk and said what ‘kind of season do you want to finish up with?’,” Regina coach Rick Larew said. “I told them there are a couple of ways to approach things, you can either look around and try to blame other people or say what can I do better.”

Larew said his team opted for the second option, to look to get better and the Regals have done that over the last four days.

Regina (10-2) started its four-day streak with a 2-0 road win at third-ranked West Liberty on Friday.

That jump started a stretch that saw the Regals post wins over 2A ninth-ranked Davenport Assumption, 1A No. 10 Council Bluffs St. Albert and Burlington Notre Dame on Saturday.

The final exclamation point in the four-day run was a 3-1 win over Mid-Prairie (6-5) on Monday.

“Going into the West Liberty game we knew that they are a good team and it re-centered us really quickly,” Regina senior Quinn Warren said. “I think having those games right after a loss really helped us.”

Warren scored twice and Petersen added a goal on Monday as Regina improved to 4-0 in RVC matches.

“We played lights out on Saturday, there were no flukes there,” Larew said. “Tonight I thought we did a lot of things right, we didn’t get as many goals as we wanted but still came out on top and They are very well coached, they are a good team and I thought we did a lot of things right.”

Regina took control of the match with a pair of goals in the final 10 minutes of the first half.

Warren opened the scoring when he slipped in a shot from the left side of the box with 9:16 remaining in the opening half.

“We just had to break the seal or the other team can get more confidence,” Warren said. “That was a big one.”

Sophomore Ethan Beard slipped a pass from the top of the box to Warren on the left corner and the senior went across the goal and just inside the right post to give Regina an early advantage.

“We noticed they were over shifting and once we got it to the right side the left side was completely open,” Warren said. “We had one cross got it in the middle and Ethan is an unselfish player and got it to me and I was able to finish.”

Petersen gave the Regals a 2-0 lead when he converted a penalty kick following a hand ball in the box with 1:08 remaining.

Warren scored his second goal on a penalty kick with 34:32 remaining to give Regina a 3-0 lead.

Regina has outscored opponents 11-1 during its current five-match winning streak.

“That loss to Beckman kind of set us in our place,” Petersen said. “We maybe got our heads too high in some situations which happened against Beckman and we just didn’t play well. Since then we’ve beat West Liberty, we won the Catholic schools tournament and tonight we played exactly how we wanted to play we just didn’t finish chances.”

Mid-Prairie scored on a penalty kick by Tucker Miller in the second half.

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