The Xavier Saints are the undisputed champions of the Mississippi Valley Conference this year.

They've played 13 straight MVC opponents and chalked up 13 straight victories, none by less than 17 points. That includes nine straight MVC foes during the regular season and four straight Valley opponents in the playoffs.

It doesn't get any better than that, but now it's time to conquer new worlds.

Now comes Ankeny. Big, bad Ankeny in the Class 4A state finals in the UNI-Dome Friday night.

If ever there was a David vs. Goliath matchup in the Class 4A finals, this is it.

Xavier ranks 48th in total enrollment in Class 4A. Ankeny ranks second, trailing only West Des Moines Valley.

Xavier has roughly 800 students in grades 9 through 12. Ankeny has about 2,400, if you count the ninth graders who attend middle school rather than the high school.

Ankeny has three times as many students as Xavier. In fact, Ankeny could send 800 students away and still have twice as many as the Saints.

That's almost what Ankeny will do next year when its mammoth school is cut in half, with half the students attending Ankeny High School and the other half attending the new Centennial High School that's scheduled to open in Ankeny for the 2013-14 school year.

Maybe Ankeny could accelerate its timeframe and ship half its student to Centennial High School by next Friday night. Send half the football players, too.

"I don't think they're going to do it," Xavier Coach Duane Schulte said about that fanciful idea.

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. If the IHSAA had adopted a district format for Class 4A football in eastern Iowa this year, the Saints would have seriously considered leaving Class 4A and
joined Class 3A. They would have had every right, based on what the IHSAA was proposing.

Instead, the IHSAA installed a district system in the western part of the state but left the eastern part alone. When Xavier joined the MVC when the school opened, it agreed to play Class 4A football for scheduling purposes and had nowhere to turn.

But it could have been interesting if the Saints had dropped to Class 3A this year. All things being equal, they might have faced Decorah in the Class 3A semifinals last week instead of facing Cedar Falls in the Class 4A bracket.

And instead of facing Ankeny in the Class 4A championship game, they might be facing Sioux City Bishop Heelan in the Class 3A finals. Decorah and Heelan are awfully good, so there's no guarantee the 3A path would have been easier.

In any case, it's the mighty top-ranked Ankeny Hawks against the underdog but gritty third-ranked Xavier Saints. Both clubs have sparkling 13-0 records this season.

"Obviously they're very good. They have a ton of athletes," Schulte said Friday after seeing Ankeny defeat Southeast Polk in the semifinals.

By coincidence, the Saints beat Southeast Polk in the 2006 championship game in a previous MVC vs. CIML matchup six years ago. Now the Saints will be facing another CIML club in the 2012 finals, seeking their second state crown.

A total of 36 men have won multiple state titles in Iowa since the football playoffs began in 1972. If the Saints upset Ankeny, Schulte will become the 37th. And if Ankeny wins, Jerry Pezzetti will collect his second title with the Hawks.

Schulte defeated one Hall of Fame coach in the semifinals when the Saints beat Pat Mitchell and the Cedar Falls Tigers on Friday. Mitchell has won 337 games during his career at Cedar Falls, which ranks fifth in state history.

Pezzetti has won 369 games in his 52-year career, including 312 in 43 seasons at Ankeny. His 369 victories rank No. 3 all-time.

The Saints hope to play giant-killers again. Load those slingshots.