Xavier Football

Xavier rolls overmatched Indians, 55-0

It couldn't have gone much better Friday night for the Xavier football team.

Facing an undermanned, but game group from Marion, the Saints came in focused. Coming off an emotional 38-35 come-from-behind win over Class 1A power Iowa City Regina, Xavier showed no hint of a letdown.

The Saints scored on their first drive, took a 31-0 halftime lead, then got the game to continuous clock status on the opening play of the second half on a fumble return for a score.

When was finally finished, Xavier had a 55-0 win at Marion and an unbeaten regular season. Standing at 8-0 and a Class 3A, District 4 championship in hand, the Saints move on to the opening round of the playoffs on Wednesday at Saints Field as a No. 1 seed.

The Indians finish a 0-9 and will look to end a 17-game losing streak in 2016.

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Klein wins Metro Spotlight Award

Dallas Klein of Xavier is the winner of the Metro Spotlight Award for high school boys this week, the Metro Sports Report announced Sunday.

Klein, a senior, kicked a 35-yard field goal on the last play of the game Friday night to give the Saints a remarkable 38-35 victory over Iowa City Regina before a packed house at Regina.

Xavier trailed, 35-7, at halftime before staging one of the greatest comebacks in school history. Regina has won five state titles in a row and has a 76-2 record in its last 78 games.

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Holy mackerel! Saints boot Regina with huge rally

IOWA CITY – Xavier senior kicker Dallas Klein seemed an unlikely hero with his team trailing Iowa City Regina by 28 points at halftime.

That’s what happened, though, as the undefeated Saints launched a stunning comeback in the second half to defeat Regina, 38-35, Friday before a packed house at Regina.

Klein made a 35-yard field goal as time expired to hand Regina just its second defeat in the last 78 games.

“The guys have a lot of heart, so we always knew that we were still in it,” Klein said. “We just wanted to come out here and get back in it play by play and see if we could chip away at it.”

Senior Blake Whitten helped set up the game-winning field goal by intercepting a pass thrown by Regina quarterback Nathan Stenger deep in Xavier territory and returning it to the Xavier 42-yard line.

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It's too bad undefeated Cougars, Saints don't meet

The Kennedy Cougars and Xavier Saints have enjoyed perfect seasons in football so far. Both of them are undefeated, both are ranked high in the polls and both are racing toward No. 1 seeds in the playoffs.

It's just a shame they won't meet on the field this year.

Kennedy is a Class 4A school and Xavier is 3A, so they won't meet in the playoffs. And when the new districts were adopted two years ago, the Cougars and all the other local 4A schools said they did not want to play a 3A opponent.

So here we have Kennedy and Xavier, located 2.5 miles apart in northeast Cedar Rapids along 42nd Street, passing each on the street each day but not meeting in a game.

For the record, Xavier wanted to continue playing Kennedy, Washington, Jefferson, Linn-Mar and Prairie when they did away with football competition in the Mississippi Valley Conference and went to districts last season. However, some people who wanted to preserve the MVC viewed Xavier as one of the instigators for district football and may have held a grudge when it came time to scheduling non-district games.

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