Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – There is a lot for West High head coach Garrett Hartwig to like about senior quarterback Evan Flitz.

At the top of that list is the willingness Flitz has to work on correcting his errors rather than just celebrating his success.

Both quarterback and head coach are going to have a little bit tougher time than normal finding mistakes when they look back at Friday’s 42-7 win over Linn-Mar (1-7).

Flitz was nearly flawless on Friday passing for 224 yards and accounting for six touchdowns as Class 4A No. 2 West High improved to 8-0 and locked up the District 8 title.

“He goes to work every week, he looks at his flaws and he studies the mistakes he made and instead of just talking about what he did he looks at what he didn’t do,” Hartwig said. “As long as he does that not just in football but in life he’s going to be hugely successful.”

In a career full of impressive performances Flitz was at his best on Friday.

The senior completed his final 17 pass attempts and threw all five of his school record tying touchdown passes in first half as West High raced to a 35-0 halftime lead.

“We were happy with the way we executed,” Flitz said. “We came in and we met with our coaches and there weren’t many places where we had to fix things but it’s about consistency now. It’s about coming out like that every game and sustaining that level of effort throughout the entire game.”

Flitz added a 55-yard touchdown run in the second half as West High scored touchdowns on its first six possessions.

The career completion and touchdown leader at West High, Flitz finished 18-of-20 through the air and accounted for 304 of the Trojans’ 420 yards of total offense.

“He is on target, he’s spot on,” West High senior receiver Traevis Buchanan said of Flitz. “I’ve been playing sports with Evan since first grade so he doesn’t surprise me. I know what he’s capable of and what he can do and I’m just really happy to see his season coming along like it is.”

Flitz threw three first-half touchdown passes to Buchanan and one each to senior Austin West and junior Jalen Gaudet as the Trojans scored touchdowns on all five first-half possessions.

After back-to-back incompletions on the first West High drive of the game Flitz completed 16 straight passes to end the half, capped by a perfectly thrown fade to Gaudet for a 14-yard touchdown with 14 seconds left in the half.

Nine different West High receivers caught passes during the string of 16 consecutive completions by Flitz.

“I have trust everywhere all across the board,” Flitz said. “It starts with guys like Traevis and senior leaders like Austin West. They do a great job at practice of teaching and having guys work in and seeing the routes and the credit goes to our receivers and our receiving coaching staff.”

Flitz capped an 11-play, 82-yard scoring march on West High’s opening possession with a 16-yard strike to a wide-open Buchanan in the corner of the end zone with five minutes left in the first quarter.

“It was a deep route and I baited him on a slant and he bit on it pretty hard,” Buchanan said. “I was pretty open.”

Linn-Mar put together its best drive of the game on its ensuing possession marching to the West High 33 yard line.

Linn-Mar fumbled on a fourth-and-one play and Dillon Doyle pounced on it at the Trojan 27 yard line. 

On the first play following the fumble Flitz hit West on a quick screen and the senior turned up field and went 63 yard untouched to the end zone to put West High up 14-0.

“It was just great to be able to see him run and make play,” Flitz said. “He’s been battling some stuff and he’s worked really hard to get back and to see him at close or near full speed was just really good to see.”
Flitz and the Trojans were just getting started.

He hit Buchanan on a 2-yard slant to cap a 9-play, 61-yard drive and then rolled to his right and found Buchanan for a sliding 9-yard TD grab on the next possession.

“We said it last year and it’s still true it’s about us,” Flitz said. “It’s not who we play it’s how we play. It’s about perfecting our game and going into the next week better than we the last.”

The most impressive drive of the game for the Trojans was a 12-play, 78-yard march that started with 2:59 left in the half and ended with the 14-yard strike to Gaudet.

Flitz was 8-for-8 on the drive completing passes to five different receivers.

“I was happy that we played at the level we talk about,” Hartwig said. “It’s not who we play it’s how we play and to Linn-Mar’s credit they are getting better by the week so I was just happy with how we took care of ourselves tonight.”

                                ICW                  LM

First Downs               19                    13

Rushes-Yards            26-196             32-98

Comp-Att-Int             18-22-0            12-19-0

Passing Yards            224                  132

Punts-Avg.                 2-29.5              5-37

Fumbles-Lost             0-0                   2-1

Penalties-Yards         4-30                 7-55

West High                  14    21    7    0  –  42 

Linn-Mar                     0     0     0    7  –  7

ICW – Traevis Buchanan 16 pass from Evan Flitz (Lucas Karwal kick)

ICW – Austin West 63 pass from Flitz (Karwal kick)

ICW – Buchanan 2 pass from Flitz (Karwal kick)

ICW – Buchanan 9 pass from Flitz (Karwal kick)

ICW – Jalen Gaudet 14 pass from Flitz (Karwal kick)

ICW – Flitz 55 run (Karwal kick)

LM – Zach Gerlach 16 pass from Carter Acrea (Austin Cochrane kick)

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – ICW: Evan Flitz 5-81, Trummell Roberts 7-51, Jaylen Gaudet 2-36, Andre White 2-10, Traevis Buchanan 2-13, Owen McAreavy 1-5, Peter Breitbach 4-2, Noah Aanestad 1-0, Joey Kuehn 1-(-2).  LM: Alex Hess 11-32, Trot Carey 11-20, Aaron Nibaur 4-17, Ben Delagardelle 3-25, Isaiah Garman 2-4, Tanner Frank 1-0. 

PASSING – ICW: Evan Flitz 18-20-0 224, Joey Kuehn 0-1-0 0, Noah Aanestad 0-1-0 0. LM: Trot Carey 7-13-0 64, Carter Acrea 5-6-0 68.

RECEIVING – ICW: Traevis Buchanan 5-41, Trummell Roberts 2-25, Jaylen Gaudet 3-25, Austin Geasland 2-19, Parris Taylor 2-12, Owen McAreavy 1-5, Austin West 1-63, Andrew White 1-22, Dillon Doyle 1-9. LM: Aaron Nibaur 4-39, Zach Gerlach 3-37, Cevan Walton 3-41, Drew Strottman 1-16, Alex Hess 1-(-1).