T hinking back to the 2024 soccer season, there’s very little, if any- thing, that Gilbert boys head coach BJ Jordison would change. OK, so that’s not entirely accurate. He would have loved to change the out- come of his team’s final match, but when he looks at the big picture, he knows in the deep- est part of his heart that the season was a success. An undefeated regular sea- son. A season-long No. 1 rank- ing in Class 2A. Yet another perfect Raccoon River Confer- ence campaign and league championship. A third consecu- tive trip to the state tournament. A continuation of the program’s streak of never losing in the state quarterfinal round. A berth in the 2A Final Four. And those are just the bullet points. A 3-1 loss to eventual 2A state champion Sioux City Heelan in the state semifinals wasn’t what the Tigers had hoped for, but coming off a state crown in 2023, the boys put together the strongest two-year run in pro- gram history. And that means something. In fact, over the past four sea- sons, Gilbert has proven to be one of the statewide heavy- weights on the pitch. The Tigers have put together a 56-6 record
since the start of the 2022 sea- son, and you have to go all the way back to April 26, 2022, to find the last time they lost a conference match. They’ve been on the right side of 19 consecutive RRC encounters and have outscored their foes 84-5 during that stretch. We could go on and on. But we’ll leave you with this histori- cal fact: Gilbert has not had a losing season since 2013, and Jordison’s club has cranked out nine consecutive double-digit win seasons. Over that stretch, the Tigers are 141-38, a win- ning percentage of .788. “It’s been unreal, surreal really,” Jordison said of this run his program has been on in re- cent years. “It’s been the culmi- nation of a lot of hard work and a bunch of guys buying into a culture and style of play where we can be team first. But above all else, it takes good kids on and off the field. These last four years have been an amazing run, but you leave more with the program as a person than as a soccer player.” On the surface, the 2024 sea- son looks like a dream in many ways. What team wouldn’t want to run through the months of April and May unscathed? But it didn’t come without its chal- lenges, and Jordison says he and his players learned from the constant pressure that came from being in the spot- light.
way — won’t be their only goal. “I would never say a team should go undefeated like we did last year, but I do believe this team can be as successful as that team was,” Jordison said. “If people decide they’re all in and they decide the team is better than any individual goals, then the sky is probably the limit in terms of how good this team can be.” Replenishing what was lost to graduation won’t be easy though. You don’t just replace someone like Jackson Johnson, a two-time first-team all-state midfielder, or someone like Tru- man Kruckenberg, arguably the
“I think the boys really en- joyed the ride, but I think some- times going undefeated can be a hindrance because you could just feel that the boys didn’t ever want to lose,” Jordison said. “You can’t not play a little uptight when you haven’t lost.” Jordison is hopeful his 2025 team will ignore the outside noise and pressures, and just play they way the players know how. Play aggressive. Play free. And play for each other. If the Tigers can do all of that, then a fourth straight trip to the state tournament — that would be a program record, by the
12 GAME ON | SPRING 2025
SPRING 2025 | GAME ON 13
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