The 2018 football season kicked off Friday night, or should we say, late Friday afternoon. With the weather forecasters trumpeting fears of violent weather coming in the early evening hours, schools across eastern Iowa panicked and moved their varsity contests to an earlier time, either canceling or postponing the sophomore/freshman/JV games. For Iowa City Regina vs Xavier, the AD at Regina decided to move kickoff all the way up to 5:00 pm (the originally scheduled freshman game start time) and simply canceled the freshman game altogether.
(At least in Cedar Rapids, the predicted bad weather - torrential rain and plenty of lightning - did indeed roll through Friday night. Closer to 11:00 Friday night, but okay ...)
Anyway, yes, I'm kind of whining about the weather screwing with schedules (not to mention the freshmen getting a game taken away from them), but once the game kicked off - my goodness, it looks like Xavier is picking up right where they left off after winning last year's Class 3A state title. The Saints romped all over the Regals, scoring on their first five possessions and adding a punt-block safety as well, ending with a 44-7 victory.
Quinn Schulte was terrific at quarterback for Xavier. He ran for the first two scores, then threw four TD passes after that to account for all six of the Saints touchdowns. I had him with 67 yards on the ground and 9 of 14 passing for 177 yards, in just over a half of football. Braden Stovie had a couple of exciting runs from the tailback position, with about 63 yards and a TD catch. Kyle Moeder brought some thrills, too, catching a pair of scoring passes (56 and 39 yards) where he simply outran the Regal defenders to the end zone.
And the Saints defense was all it had been cracked up to be. While Regina QB Ashton Cook came out throwing and moved the ball well on the first series of the game, Xavier adjusted to the nonstop passing attack and started putting some pressure on the Regal sophomore. Kyle Krezek ended up with a couple of sacks on the night, and Bryson Bastian picked off an overthrow on the first possession that set up the Saints for their opening score. Ethan Hurkett, Tanner Wright, and Jon Bell were actively harrassing Regal ballcarriers all evening, with Bell getting a block of Regina's first punt attempt that resulted in a safety.
Regina has a pretty decent team: Cook is a good quarterback, and is going to grow quite a bit over the next three seasons; Alec Wick, Patrick Clark, and Scott Arndt are tall, accomplished receivers; and they've got some decent size on the lines. The Regals were able to make three sustained drives against the Saints defense (admittedly, the final 11-play, 84-yard scoring drive was against Xavier's scout defense). However, they only crossed midfield three times - once on their opening drive (with Bastian's interception coming on the next play), again on the last play of the first half (already trailing 37-0) and finally in the fourth quarter on their scoring drive.
Let's give some credit to the Xavier scout team, by the way. The offense ended the game with an 11-play, 70-yard drive, with the clock running out as the Saints were on the 2 (again, admittedly, the Regina scout team was in on defense). Patrick Chambers, Christian Klein, and Tyler DuPont picked up good yards on the ground. And Xavier's scout defense forced the Regina first-team offense to use 8 minutes of game time and 11 plays to drive for their score, aided by a couple of pass interference calls (one justified, one I really don't know about, as the ball was about 12 feet over the receiver's head).
Anyway, a solid, dominating performance by Xavier to open the season. It made four straight victories over Regina in five years (in fact, Regina's victory in 2014 was the last time Xavier had lost a regular-season game) and 28 consecutive regular-season wins. Next week Decorah comes to Saints Field, bringing a Viking team that dropped the top-rated Class 2A team, Waukon.
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