Kee football team plays to best season record since 2014 and first State Play-Off win since joining Eight-Player ranks

The 2020 Kee football team played its way to a 5-4 season record, the best overall mark for the Hawk grid program since the 2014 season when the Kee gridders pieced together a 6-4 campaign and the last time the Hawks competed in a State Play-Off game. Although those two seasons seem very similar in their results from the gridiron, the one glaring difference is what else was taking place during the season, with this 2020 campaign being shrouded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While that pandemic has been impacting most things throughout the entire year 2020, and had the potential to do so without notice, the Kee boys were fortunate enough to avoid any such impact. Hawk head football coach Chad Winters realizes that wasn’t necessarily the case for all Iowa high school teams this fall, and he made sure his charges knew and appreciated that fact.

“We came close a couple different times to having the season disrupted on both our end and the opponents’ end,” Coach Winters said. “Fortunately, we were able to play a full season without any interruptions. We kept relaying the messages to the boys about being grateful we had the opportunity to compete because not all kids are getting this opportunity. I think they realized how lucky they were and did take full advantage of the opportunity that we were given.”

In looking at the Hawks’ 2020 season schedule, the game that ended up being right in the center of that slate was the only game in which the final scoreboard ended up being less than 20 points. The even split of those eight games on either side of that 50-46 mid-season Kee victory at North Iowa included four wins by an average margin of 34.25 points and four losses by an average of 38 points, with all four of those losses coming to teams that advanced at least to the second round of the Eight-Player State Play-Offs, just like the Hawks did.

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