You are right - PV has not been to State (according to IAHSAA) since at least 1999. But there are three key things to keep in mind here :
1) Substate pairings are done in a lazy fashion. They are set before the season begins and do not take into account rankings, win / loss, etc. - from either this year or the previous year. PV is almost always state ranked, but has the misfortune of being in the same substate bracket as Bettendorf. Not just this bracket is set up in this fashion, but all brackets around the state. Would make more sense to spread out the top teams in multiple brackets so that State Tournament was more representative of top talent and not just geographic pools.
2) Based on enrollment, PV is very close to being a 2A school in soccer. They have a lot less kids than Bettendorf. The only MAC 3A school with a smaller enrollment is North Scott. PV enrollment is only 834, Bettendorf has 1,169. The bigger the enrollment, the more you have an opportunity to get better athletes. FYI, the biggest schools in the MAC are Davenport West with 1,635 and Muscatine with 1,760.
3) PV has no true club feeder system. They "share" the BSA with Bettendorf - and, again, based on numbers of enrollment, most of the kids are Bettendorf kids.
I'm not arguing that Bettendorf doesn't do a great job - they do! Just saying that PV does more with less.