Douglas Miles

Your Prep Sports

DES MOINES – It is not unusual for first-time state tournament participants to be content with just getting there.

From the moment the Liberty High boys’ soccer team stepped foot on the lush, green grass of Cownie Soccer Park in Des Moines, it was clear that this bunch came to win.

“I’m not going to lie, I knew the talent that was at Liberty before I got up there,” first-year Liberty High coach Matt Harding said after the sixth-seeded Lightning routed No. 5 Norwalk, 5-0, in Saturday’s Class 3A state championship match. “I don’t know how big of a reach it was. They had never been to state before, but these players have been in big games and pressure situations before. I’ve seen them perform well in big games. It was definitely something that we were aiming for.”

The state title not only arrives in Liberty High’s state debut, it comes in just the fifth season of competition for the burgeoning Lightning program.

It is also the first team title for any boys’ program in Liberty’s brief history.

“It means a lot to finally bring home a state champ,” Liberty sophomore goalkeeper Conley Sundblad said. “Words cannot even explain how happy I am right now.”

The shutout is the sixth in the final seven matches for Sundblad and Liberty (12-8), which outscored the opposition by a whopping 39-2 over that span.

The five-score win over Norwalk represents the largest rout — regardless of class — in any Iowa boys’ soccer state championship match dating back to its 1995 inception.

“The whole (defensive) unit was great,” Harding said. “We knew they were really dangerous crossing balls in, so it was going to be a big day for Quinn (Lawrence) and for Zach (Nelson) to be shutting down those dangerous players. And then when those balls do get in, Haider (Nasr) and Forrest (Saul) were going to have to deal with No. 11 (Norwalk’s Jack Brown), a very dangerous attacker. So just being aware of where the danger was and making sure we were kind of snuffing that out. And then doing what we do. Hang onto the ball, make them run a little bit and we were definitely able to do that in the heat.”

After a scoreless stalemate that lasted through the opening 20-plus minutes, Liberty High senior standout Hayden Saul broke through with a goal in the 22nd minute.

“I saw him running at me,” Saul said. “I saw the look on his face, I turned and there was an empty slot left.”

Six minutes later, Saul assisted on a score by his younger brother Cooper Saul, who sliced the ball between the knees of a Norwalk defender and past the goalkeeper for the 2-0 Liberty High lead.

For the three Saul brothers, the opportunity for two of them to unite for a score in a state championship match in their final day as teammates is sure to be remembered forever.

“It means a lot,” Cooper Saul said. “Me and my brothers have been playing together since I was seven and this is probably the biggest thing that we have ever done. To do it as a team, it’s special.”

Liberty High doubled its scoring output in the final two minutes of the first half.

Hayden Saul scored his second goal of the game and team-best 24this season with a header off a corner kick.

Just seconds later, Nasr pounced on the stunned Norwalk defense with a strike and suddenly Liberty High charged to the halftime huddle with a 4-0 lead.

“It kills their motivation,” Hayden Saul said.

Liberty High sophomore Mason Pentecost scored the final goal of the match in the 56th minute when he corralled a rebound off a goal post deflection and fired it back into the net.

Norwalk ends its season at 13-8.

After dropping seven of its first nine matches this season against a rugged schedule, Liberty High won 10 of its final 11 to claim the state championship.

Even to its most-ardent supporters, the climb back from 2-7 at the end of April to state champion had to feel like a mountainous task.

“To see it come together after the way we started,” Harding said. “If you would have asked me in April, could we just be .500? I don’t think we hit .500 until the substate (semi)-final, maybe. Can we guarantee we’re going to have a winning record? OK, cool. And then it just kind of went from there.”

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