Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – This is the time of year every player on every football team wants to be at their best.

As the postseason begins and the stakes get higher its imperative for everyone to be operating a high level.

Perhaps no quarterback, or any player at any position, in the state enters the postseason playing as well as Liberty High senior quarterback Emerson Berner.

Berner enters Friday’s Class 5A postseason opener at Indianola (7-1) on an absolute tear. The senior quarterback has passed for better than 250 yards and four touchdowns in four of his last five games helping Liberty High (6-3) go 4-1 down the stretch and return to the postseason for the third consecutive season.

“I would say the game has started to slow down for me,” Berner said. “The reps started adding up and I started to get more comfortable.”

Berner didn’t play poorly to open the season.

In his first four games as the Lightning starter the 6-foot-2, 185 Berner completed 64 percent of his passes while throwing for 703 yards and seven touchdowns with seven interceptions as Liberty High started the season 2-2.

It was a solid start for a quarterback playing his first extended varsity action.

Over the last month Berner has simply taken his game to another level.

“We knew how good he can be it was just a matter of time,” Liberty High first-year head coach Mitch Wieland said. “There was an element of coaching too. Early on there was some stuff I thought we were going to be good at we maybe weren’t as good there so it was just a matter of getting with him and seeing what was going well and what was not and we really honed in on his strengths.”

Berner hit his stride down the stretch as Liberty High won four of its final five regular season games to secure a spot in the 5A postseason.

The senior completed 73 percent of his passes over the final five games, throwing for 1,389 yards and 18 touchdowns without an interception.

“I feel like I’ve improved on cutting down on the turnovers that really hurt as at the start of the year,” Berner said. “It’s just seeing the field, knowing my matchups and that’s an area where I’ve improved.”

Berner has thrown four touchdown passes in each of the last four Liberty High victories.

In those wins over West High, Davenport Central, City High and Muscatine Berner has nearly as many touchdown passes (16) as he does incompletions (24).

“He has unmatched arm talent and accuracy and I think the thing that goes unnoticed is his timing with his footwork,” Wieland said. “He is really keen and aware of his what his drops are supposed to be and his reads and all the pre-snap stuff that the average person doesn’t really understand.”

Berner has thrown touchdown passes to five different receivers over the past five games with seniors Adrian Clerry and Pryor Reiners combining for 10 of the 18 touchdown passes during that span.

“It was just going to come eventually, we’ve been friends for a long time, we’ve been working out together for a long time so it was only a matter of time before it really clicked,” Berner said. “Myself, Adrian (Clerry) and Pryor (Reiners) we’ve worked together for so long it was going to click.”

Entering the postseason opener Berner ranks third in Class 5A in both passing yards (2,092) and passing touchdowns (25) and second in completions (173).

Berner has completed 69 percent of his passes and has also rushed for a touchdown.

“I think he’s just a professional,” Wieland said. “He shows up, he goes to work and he’s won the locker room. The guys have really rallied around him and I think that’s big.”

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