Sports

In looking ahead to his team’s Class 2A District 3 home battle with Oelwein a week earlier, Waukon football head coach Chad Beermann had said his team will “need to stick together, execute well, and overcome our own injuries.” Once they took the field Friday, October 4 against the visiting Huskies, one could say the grid Tribe did all of those things in dominating from start to finish on the way to a 68-8 win that gave the Indians their first Class 2A District 3 victory of this season while keeping an Oelwein team depleted by injury and low participation numbers in search of its first win at all for this fall campaign.

The Waukon volleyball team had one date of each competition on its schedule this past week, playing in both a dual match and a weekend tournament within the past week’s time. The net Tribe experienced differing results between those two events, falling in its Tuesday, October 1 Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) dual match at Decorah in three sets but bouncing back nicely to win four of five matches at the Oelwein Tournament Saturday, October 5 to claim that tournament team championship by avenging its lone match loss at the tournament later in the title bout.

Now holding a 17-9 season record that includes a yet winless mark in three NEIC matches, the volleyball Indians were next scheduled to wrap up their regular season with one final NEIC match, hosting New Hampton Tuesday, October 8. They will then play in the Northeast Iowa Conference Tournament Saturday, October 19 at Crestwood before awaiting their Class 3A Regional Tournament assignment yet to be announced.

Coming off back-to-back losses to the top two teams in Eight-Player District 3 - and perhaps two of the higher-end teams in Iowa’s Eight-Player class this season with a combined record of 11-1 for Don Bosco and Riceville, the Kee football team made just its second road trip of this fall’s grid campaign and got back on the winning track in a big way with a 63-6 win against a team on the other end of the success spectrum Friday, October 4. Scoring on all but two of its 10 full possessions in the ballgame, and coming up just one special teams play shy of a shut-out, the Hawks had six different players find the end zone in more of a grinding-out fashion with no scoring plays longer than 22 yards while all but shutting down the offensive effort of a winless West Central team to improve to 4-2 on the season and a 3-2 mark in Eight-Player District 3.

The Kee girls and boys cross country teams pulled double-duty this past week, competing in a pair of meets to the south and to the north of the Hawks’ home area. Kee’s distance dandies first competed in the Jesup Invitational Tuesday, October 1, where the Kee boys finished 14th as a team. The Hawks then traveled north of the border to compete in the Lewiston-Altura Invitational in Minnesota, where the Hawk boys placed 11th as a team. The Kee girls did not have enough runners to compile a team score at either meet.

“The Kee Hawks had a busy week of distance running,” Kee cross country coach Pat Wagner said of his program’s week that included a pair of competitions. “The team used a perfect day on Tuesday to turn in their best performances of the season.”

The Waukon girls cross country team pulled double-duty this past week with a pair of meets within a couple nights of one another, finishing second in both of those events. Ranked seventh in the latest Class 2A team rankings by the Iowa Association of Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches, the Tribe’s distance ladies finished runner-up to Class 3A 15th-rated Decorah at Waukon’s own home invitational Tuesday, September 24 before also claiming second place at the Panther Invitational hosted by Central Springs Thursday, September 26, behind Class 2A fourth-rated Forest City.

The Lady Indians were next scheduled to compete at the Western Dubuque Invitational Thursday, October 3 before running at the South Winneshiek Invitational Tuesday, October 8 at Calmar. They will then prepare for the Northeast Iowa Conference Meet hosted by Decorah at Luther College Tuesday, October 15.

The Waukon boys cross country team hosted its own invitational this past week, welcoming nine other teams that tallied team scores at the meet and created a field of 66 individual varsity runners Tuesday, September 24. Placing three runners within the top-10 individuals - including the individual champion - and all seven of their varsity runners in the meet’s top-20, the Class 2A ninth-rated Indians scored 47 team points but finished second to a Class 3A fifth-rated Decorah squad that dominated half of that top-10 for 32 team points.

The Indians were next scheduled to compete at the Jesup Invitational Tuesday, October 1 before taking part in the Tuesday, October 8 South Winneshiek Invitational in Calmar. They will then prepare for their Northeast Iowa Conference Meet taking place at Luther College in Decorah Tuesday, October 15.

Coming off its first loss of the season, and playing its first road game of this 2024 campaign, the Kee football team was facing another of Eight-Player District 3’s top contending teams when the Hawks traveled to Riceville Friday, September 27. With each team having lost to District 3 front-runner Don Bosco during the two previous football Friday nights, the runner-up position behind the undefeated Dons in the District 3 standings was on the line, but a 12-0 early Kee hill to climb and a final 32 unanswered points by the host Wildcats in the third and fourth quarters turned an otherwise blow-for-blow battle between the two squads into an eventual 65-44 defeat for Kee’s gridders.

Looking to bounce back from a Homecoming loss that opened its Class 2A District 3 schedule a week earlier, the Waukon football team traveled to Cresco Friday, September 27 to take on a Crestwood squad that had picked up its first win of the season the week prior and had played to a winless non-district start to the season against the same three ranked opponents the grid Tribe had gone 1-2 against to start its 2024 campaign. That lone victory for the host Cadets heading into their own Homecoming game this past Friday was a forfeit win over a depleted Oelwein team, but that week off from competition may have very well factored into Crestwood, literally, running away to a 32-16 defeat of the Indians.

The lone event on the Waukon girls cross country team’s schedule this past week proved to be successful for the Lady Indians, as they topped the 16-team overall scoring field at the varsity level of the Starmont Invitational Tuesday, September 17. With the distance Tribe being one of four ranked teams from Class 2A competing at the race, the 14th-ranked Lady Indians edged out sixth-rated Sumner-Fredericksburg by two points for the invitational win, and also left 10th-rated Denver and 18th-rated Union behind as well.

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The Waukon football team’s Friday, September 20 home football game against North Fayette Valley (NFV) proved to not be the happiest of Homecomings for the grid Tribe, as the visiting Tigerhawks jumped out to a 24-0 halftime lead on the way to a 31-14 defeat of the Indians. A game that mapped out fairly closely in yards gained didn’t follow that same trend on the scoreboard, with two turnovers looming large in the game’s final 17-point difference.

The Indians will hit the road for another Class 2A District 3 match-up this week, traveling to Cresco to take on a Crestwood Cadet squad that has a similar 1-3 overall record, getting its first win of the season this past Friday with a forfeit handed to them by a depleted Oelwein squad that is on the Tribe’s schedule next week. Facing a similar non-district schedule as the Indians in the first three games of this season, Crestwood suffered losses to MFL/MarMac, 9-7; to Independence, 41-27; and to Decorah, 28-21.