Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Following four consecutive shutouts of River Valley Conference foes top-ranked Regina hit a bit of speed bump in an otherwise smooth ride through the first month of the season.

Class 1A top-ranked Regina didn’t suffer a setback last week but the Regals weren’t thrilled with their performance in a 3-1 win at Cedar Valley Christian/Alburnett last Friday.

Longtime coach Rick Larew had the Regals refocused on Monday and that focus had little to do with the opponent.

“What we are working on right now is to recall the competition is with ourselves, can you get better every day, can you improve upon something,” Larew said. “The end of last week we didn’t do that an I talked to them about that. The score doesn’t really matter, it’s a matter of how well you play and how much you improve. If we win a game five, six seven to zero but you don’t play well what does that get us?”

Larew liked what he saw from the Regals in a 7-0 win over RVC South Division foe Mid-Prairie (3-6-2) on Monday.

Senior Evan White had two goals and a pair of assists and sophomore Evan Greve had two goals as five different Regals found the back of the net as Regina improved to 10-0-1 on the season and 7-0 in RVC play.

“We had kind of a tough end of the week last week, we didn’t play the game we wanted to so our focus this week was just to go out and play hard and dominate and I think we did well,” White said. “I think the team came together really well and we played a really good game.”

White scored a pair of first-half goals as Regina took a 3-0 halftime lead.

Greve scored twice in the second half and brother Drew Greve added a goal as Regina won for the seventh consecutive match and posted its fifth shutout since a 0-0 draw against Class 4A Pleasant Valley on April 7.

“We are proud of how we played as a team,” Drew Greve said. “I think it’s something to build on because we’ve really been trying to promote just beating ourselves every single week and the team are going to play is ourselves. Regardless of if we are playing a 4A team or a 1A team we are trying to beat ourselves and get better so in about a month time we are on top of our game and playing the best we can.”

Junior Kevyn Dominguez started the scoring when he slipped in a shot from just inside the box with 25:30 remaining in the opening quarter.

“The way we play offense is no secret, we want to attack the 18 box,” Larew said. “Once you are inside the 18 box the rules are different so attack the 18 box and then take your shots and it’s worked times and times again.”

White scored twice in a span of a little more than 10 minutes late in the half to give the Regals a 3-0 halftime cushion.

The senior scored with 15:36 remaining before halftime and added a second goal with five minutes remaining in the opening half.

White ranks second on the team with 17 goals this season behind team leader Laird Holden who has 19 goals.

Holden didn’t score on Monday but had an assist and helped create opportunities for teammates.

“Everybody sees it in the headlines but the gravity that Laird (Holden) has when he’s on the field, the opposing team’s defense has to know where he is and that just opens up a lot of opportunities for me and guys like Connor Hoffman, Kevyn Dominguez guys to get in there and score,” White said. “Laird didn’t score tonight but he set up basically all of our goals just by being on the field.”

Ethan Beard had a goal less than a minute into the second half to start a string for three Regina goals in the opening 14 minutes of the second half.

Evan Greve scored back-to-back goals in less than two minutes to push the lead to 6-0 before Drew Greve capped the scoring with goal with 4:07 remaining.

“He’s been playing great this year,” Drew Greve said of his younger brother. “He’s gotten a few more goals which is fun to see when he gets rewarded in that way, especially being a midfielder you don’t necessarily get all the stats so it was nice to see him score, I’m proud of him.”

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