High school football: 7 Gazette-area teams move on to playoff semifinals
CEDAR RAPIDS — Seven is heaven. Eight would have been better, of course, but seven Gazette-area football teams in this week’s state playoff semifinals is pretty good. Really good. The only class where there are no representatives is Class 5A. It’s an all suburban-Des Moines affair there, with Ankeny playing Johnston and West Des Moines Dowling opposing Southeast Polk. But in the other six classes … Iowa Valley plays Woodbine in the 8-Player semifinals Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. The Tigers are ranked third, Woodbine second. The other semi pits No. 1 Audubon and No. 4 Gladbrook-Reinbeck. All four teams are undefeated. Like Iowa Valley, North Linn is a semifinalist for the first time. The sixth-ranked Lynx (10-1) stunned No. 3 Saint Ansgar, 41-0, in Friday night’s quarterfinals. You can use the word “stunned” because of the margin of victory, not necessarily because North Linn won. It scored 14 points in the first quarter and 27 in the second to get the continuous clock going. “I’m not a scoreboard guy, you know what I mean?” said North Linn Coach Jared Collum. “Comparing scores and all that. But I do compare film a lot. Just
