Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – Liberty High entered the postseason atop the ratings percentage index and thus the top seed in the Class 5A playoffs.

With five regular season wins over playoff qualifiers the Lightning are certainly worthy of their top-seeded status.

Yet entering Friday’s Class 5A semifinals Liberty High is an underdog story simply too good to ignore.

In its seventh season of varsity football Liberty High (10-1) will be making its first ever semifinal appearance on Friday when it faces three-time defending state champion Southeast Polk (7-4) at 7 p.m. at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls.

“We are the number one seed but we don’t feel like a number one seed we feel like the underdog all these CIML teams,” Liberty High senior wide receiver Dallas Miller said. “We like being the underdog, we’ve got a chip on our shoulder. We just have to go in and make plays like we have all season.”

Just the third winning season in Liberty High history this fall produced resulted in the third playoff appearance for the Lightning and the first as a Class 5A program.

In its semifinal debut the Lightning join a 5A semifinal field filled with some of the biggest of the big boys in Iowa high school football.

The other three 5A semifinalists, Southeast Polk, West Des Moines Dowling and West Des Moines Valley, have combined for 18 total state titles including 12 of the last 14 big-school championships.

You couldn’t come up with a better David vs. Goliath story if you tried and Liberty High wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I couldn’t write it up any better,” Liberty High senior two-way standout Sutton Koller said. “Going up against the back-to-back-to-back champs, that’s what we want.”
There is more to Liberty High’s underdog feel than the historic storyline.

While traditional powers like Southeast Polk, 10-time champ West Des Moines Dowling and West Des Moines Valley rarely use players on both sides of the ball Liberty High has most of its top players going both ways.

It’s yet another thing that some see as a disadvantage yet this Liberty High team has embraced.

“We had guys that only played offense last year that wanted to play defense last year and this year our coaches said let’s put our athletes on defense and let them step up,” Koller said. “I think that’s really paid off.”

Many of those two-way players, like seniors Miller and Koller are considered undersized by 5A football standards.

Koller, who has caught 34 passes for 804 yards and 10 touchdowns and rushed for 522 yards and eight touchdowns is 5-foot-11, 180 pounds.

Miller who has caught a team-high 57 passes for 833 yards and eight touchdowns in 5-foot-11, 170-pounds.

“We don’t have all those 6-foot-2, 200-pound guys, it would be nice but we don’t have that,” Miller said. “(Head coach Scott) Chandler, give all the credit to him, he puts the right offense out there. He does what we are good at and not what a 6-foot-2, 200-pound guy would do.”

Junior quarterback Reece Rettig has been among the most productive in the state this season throwing for 2,385 yards and 29 touchdowns with three interceptions and rushing for 452 yards and six touchdowns.

Rettig is 5-foot-10, 165-pounds.

“I think putting Reece Retting in at quarterback, who is really smart and really athletic and he’s always up for a challenge and he’s filled that role great,” Koller said. “We let our athletes make plays.”

Tag Liberty High as the underdog or the Cinderella story that’s fine.

The Lightning certainly fit the role.

The semifinal newcomer, undersized and overlooked with a chip on the shoulder.

But here’s the thing. They are good.

Really good.
Liberty High brings an eight-game winning streak into its semifinal showdown with three-time defending champion Southeast Polk.

The Lightning have won back-to-back playoff games over CIML programs Waukee (31-14) and Ankeny (21-13) and are 7-1 against playoff teams this season.

Liberty High is averaging 40.7 points and 430 total yards per game and is putting up 7.6 yards per play.

The Lightning are winning games by an average of better than 15 points and have an incredible yards per play differential of +2.7.

After allowing 42 points or more three times in the first four games Liberty High has allowed more than 22 points just once in its last seven games.

Liberty High is holding opponents to 21.8 points per game during its eight-game winning streak.

“If someone told me before the start of the season that we were going to be a Dome team I would have said that’s a stretch but I’m not surprised we are here,” Koller said. “Our defense has really been stepping up lately and I think that’s what making the difference.”

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