Douglas Miles

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – It is a terrific level of consistency.

The City High boys soccer program has advanced to within a game of the state tournament in each of the past 11 seasons.

It took a rugged defensive effort to make it a dozen.

“That is what good teams do,” City High Coach Jose Michel Fajardo said after the Class 4A 10th-ranked Little Hawks blanked Ankeny Centennial, 2-0, in a substate semifinal match Monday at Iowa City High School. “You know you can’t dominate a game 100 percent. That is impossible at this level. So when you don’t dominate the game, you have to do a job with your goalkeeper, with your defenders and that is what we did.”

The shutout was the eighth in 14 matches this season for City High (11-3), which advances to a substate final for the 12th time in a row.

Ninth-ranked Des Moines Roosevelt (12-4) awaits the Little Hawks Wednesday at the newly-minted Mediacom Stadium in Des Moines.

Des Moines Roosevelt defeated Ottumwa 5-1 in a semifinal match on Monday.

Win there, and City High is on to the state tournament for the first time since 2018, its last of seven state berths in a row.

“I really like this group,” said team captain Joel Eckhardt, City High’s lone starting senior. “For me personally, I am a senior. It would be my first time going to state, so that would be great. I think we have the team. We’re locked in. If we just play well, if we just keep possession a little bit more and just (allow) no goals, we’re through (to state).”

City High jumped on top of Centennial in the 19th minute when freshman forward Taylor Salinas found junior forward Josh Borger Germann for a scoring strike.

The goal was the third for Borger Germann this season.

“Taylor did the hard work, him and Lucas (Riley),” Borger Germann said. “I just finished it. One touch was all I needed. Did my job and I’m proud of it.”

The Little Hawks’ defense, led by Eckhardt and junior Jackson Nichols-Lindsey, made sure the score held up until the final 90 seconds when Riley looked downfield, found the Centennial goalkeeper had strayed away from the box and booted home a goal from 50 yards away.

“I don’t why he was that far out,” Riley said. “I thought, ‘I think I can get there’.”

Centennial was shut out for the eighth time this season and ends at 5-12.

City High has dropped each of its last four substate final appearances, including a 2-1 loss last season to Cedar Rapids Kennedy.

“Don’t believe that the next one is the easy one,” Fajardo said. “Because that is what happened last year.”

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