Scoring a state-high 43 goals last season surely earned St. Cloud Cathedral’s Jacob Oliver an emphatic circle on opponent’s game plans for the upcoming season.

As he returns for his senior year with the Crusaders, the attacking midfielder — if he keeps up his scoring pace — has a chance to turn heads for another reason.

Only four boys soccer players in state history have surpassed the 100-goal mark in their high school careers, according to Minnesota State High School Soccer Coaches Association records. That quartet includes another Crusader, Michael Coborn, who netted 102 goals before he graduated in 2009.

Oliver has scored 82 times for Cathedral, helping the Class 1A program to back-to-back third-place finishes at state. That 100-goal club — and his school record — are both within reach as he chases his team’s first state title, hoping to become the first player to reach the century mark and win a state championship.

“He has great vision on the field. So it’s not just about scoring, it’s about getting the other guys involved, too,” Cathedral coach Alex Hess said. “He gets the most out of everyone who’s around him.”

This year, “everyone who’s around him” will look a little different. The Crusaders graduated 10 rostered seniors, including forward Jack Stang, a finalist for Minnesota’s Mr. Soccer, the award given to the top senior in each size classification.

Last fall, Oliver had to play without Stang, to a decidedly positive prognosis. The attacking duo had fine-tuned their dance, terrorizing opponents with a fail-proof double act. Stang would score once or twice or even five times in a game. Oliver would answer with a goal or two of his own. In 2023, the pair had finished neck-and-neck, Oliver scoring 29 goals to Stang’s 26.

Then the dancers missed a step late last September, when Stang went down with an ankle injury that kept him sidelined for three weeks, including throughout the section playoffs.

“We needed some more scoring,” Oliver said. “I knew somebody had to step up. And I was like, why not me?”

Why not Oliver? When Stang was sidelined, the pair would confer at halftime, the senior pointing out things he noticed from the bench. In the stretch of seven games Stang missed, Oliver scored six hat tricks, and he added a seventh in Stang’s first game back, against Fergus Falls.

Entering the season, Oliver had just hoped to beat his sophomore scoring total, but “the number kept creeping up,” he said. “It was like, I’ll just take it game by game … see what [the team] needs.”

While paired with freshman Daniel Lee, Oliver adapted to find open spaces to receive passes normally reserved for the speedy Stang, or looked to send passes to such teammates as Connor Stockman. Oliver finished last fall with 20 assists.

“[Lee] was a freshman, and Jacob was able to use him and lean on him and say: ‘Hey, I need you here. I need you to help me, and I’m going to help you,’ ” Hess said. “He just elevates everyone.”

Oliver’s 43 goals — 11 clear of the state’s next-highest scorer — helped St. Cloud Cathedral finish 21-1 last season, dropping only the state semifinal game against Rochester Lourdes.

After back-to-back undefeated regular seasons, earning a spot in a state championship game is still a hurdle the program is looking to clear.

“Obviously [this year], the first goal is to make the state tournament, give ourselves a chance to go win a state championship,” Oliver said. “But I also know we have a really young team this year, so I want to be a good leader for them and show what it takes to … do some things that I know they want to do in their future.”

As Cathedral has strung together four consecutive state tournament experiences, more and more top teams have penned the Crusaders into their schedules. Three-time defending Class 1A state champion St. Paul Academy will head north to St. Cloud, a new stop on its schedule. Cathedral will travel to Breck to face a perennial power that knocked Hess out of the state tournament when he played for the Crusaders. Rochester Lourdes will travel three hours for a rematch of last year’s Class 1A semifinal that ended in Lourdes’ favor.

“We’re always going to have a target on our back,” Hess said. “We don’t take that lightly. That’s something that we are proud of. When players come into our program, they understand that.

“[Our guys], they like winning, but they hate losing,” Hess said, recalling 2022’s 6-0 state quarterfinal loss to St. Paul Academy that began the Crusaders’ 42-2 stretch and Oliver’s scoring flurry.

And yes, assured Hess — “That’s different.”