Sports

A wait of more than two weeks to compete on an outdoor track finally came to a close for the Waukon boys track team, as the Indians traveled to New Hampton Thursday, April 12. The track Tribe claimed seven top-three event finishes to help accumulate 74 team points on the way to a sixth-place finish in the meet’s nine-team field.

VARSITY TEAM SCORES
North Fayette Valley 134; New Hampton 113; Turkey Valley 91; South Winneshiek 87.5; Waverly-Shell Rock 84; WAUKON 74; Nashua-Plainfield 65.5; Sumner-Fredericksburg 46; Tripoli 45

JV TEAM SCORES
South Winneshiek 55; WAUKON 52; New Hampton 33; Waverly-Shell Rock 31; Tripoli 29; Sumner-Fredericksburg 29; North Fayette Valley 24; Turkey Valley 22; Nashua-Plainfield 12

The members of the Waukon High School cheerleading squad pictured at right were chosen by the Iowa Cheer Coaches Association All-Star cheerleaders directors and choreographer to perform as part of the 2018 Iowa All-Star Team, being selected to cheer at the Iowa High School All-Star basketball games held at Dallas Center Grimes High School Saturday, March 24. In January of this year, Waukon High School cheerleading coaches Amy and Lexie Bieber recorded try-out videos for the All-Star selection process consisting of the girls doing a short cheer, a short dance routine (4, 8 counts) and a toe touch. The coaches also wrote recommendations and skills levels for each of their skills.

Waukon High School senior Mitchell Snitker was honored as the 2017-2018 Iowa High School Athletic Directors Association/National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Male Athlete Student Scholarship Award Winner for the state of Iowa at the Iowa High School Athletic Directors Association annual convention and banquet held March 25 in Coralville. He is pictured in the center of the submitted photo at right with Waukon High School Assistant Principal and Activities Director Brian Hilsabeck (left) and Waukon Middle School Principal and Activities Director Jen Garin (right).

Two Waukon High School cheerleaders have been selected as part of the Iowa Shrine Bowl All-Star Cheer Squad and will be cheering at the 2018 Iowa Shrine Bowl All-Star Football Classic to be played July 21 at the UNI-Dome on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in Cedar Falls. That Waukon High School pair is pictured above and includes, left to right, juniors Michaela Dehli and Brittney Troester.

In addition to football and cheerleading, the annual Shrine Bowl benefits the Shriner’s Hospitals for Children by raising sponsorship funding that is donated directly to the Shriner Hospital program. Each individual participant in the Shrine Bowl is asked to raise $800 in sponsorship and/or donation funding.

Kaitlyn Krambeer, a sixth grade student at Waukon Middle School and the daughter of Brad and Becky Krambeer of rural Waukon, is a Level 6 gymnast who recently competed in the Iowa State Meet held in Des Moines. Participants must qualify for that State Meet at one of the other meets hosted throughout the season.

Krambeer started gymnastics when she was just three years old. She has been competing in the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic program since she was seven years old and has qualified for every State Meet since she began her competition in that Junior Olympic program at the age of seven. She is a member of the Dolphin Gymnastics Team in Decorah, and in addition to gymnastics, she is also involved in basketball and softball.

The 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is now officially over, with Villanova winning this year’s tournament championship. Likewise, the 180 entries in The Standard’s 2018 Basketball Bracket Challenge have also played out to one single champion, that being Jamie Kruse of Waukon.

But, quite the opposite of the NCAA Championship game’s final result, a sizable 79-62 victory for Villanova, Kruse just narrowly edged out three other entries by just a single point to win this year’s Bracket Challenge. Kruse ended up with 136 points to finish just in front of Jim Winters, Marlene Houg and Austin Troendle and their Bracket Challenge totals of 135 points each. Those three finished tied for second place in that order listed above based on their championship game combined point total tie-breaker selections of 140, 146 and 148 points, respectively, with Villanova and Michigan combining for 141 points in Monday’s championship game.

Despite seeing its fourth head coach in the past five seasons, the Waukon girls basketball program took a strong step forward during its 2017-2018 campaign, that step taking the Lady Indians to their best overall season record, 14-7, during that same five-year timeframe under the direction of first-year head Tribal leader Greg Criswell. Further evidence of the positive steps made this season could be found in the Tribe’s Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) mark of 9-3 that placed the Indians in a tie for second place in the final NEIC standings and proved to tie their best NEIC record since the Indians’ last State Qualifying season of nearly perfect 2009-2010.

Cassandra Berger, left, and Ashley Fuhrman, right, took the opportunity for this photo (at right) after their respective teams matched up on the lacrosse field Wednesday, March 21 in Dubuque. Berger’s University of Dubuque Spartans defeated Fuhrman’s Clarke University Pride, 16-12, in the non-conference match-up. “Pretty cool to have two people from Waukon playing against each other in a sport that we didn’t play in high school,” Berger said when she submitted the photo. “Especially considering that we played basketball together in high school five years ago.”

The Waukon boys golf team will look to the return of four varsity letterwinners from last season to lead one of its largest overall squads in recent history, as 21 young men have reported for early-season workouts so far this spring. While 21 is a promising number for a program that has been working to see growth in recent seasons, the fact that a majority of those 21 are fi rst-time participants and either sophomores or freshmen has third-year head coach Tharin Benson looking for complements to his quartet of veteran returnees.

“The amount of golfers out this year is a pleasant surprise, it’s great to see all the younger grades go out,” Coach Benson said. “Depth will be a concern. We’re still looking for a couple golfers to fill the rest of the varsity squad. As of now, it’s still up in the air.”

The Waukon girls golf team will be looking to begin building another solid foundation, as just two varsity letterwinners return from a squad that played to a fourthplace finish at the Northeast Iowa Conference Tournament and also advanced to the Regional Finals round of postseason play last spring before having its season brought to a close. On a team of 14 players this season, those two returning veterans will make up half of a group of just four who have ever competed in high school golf before.

“We have a young team with 10 players out for the first time,” Waukon girls golf head coach Kathy McMillan said. “It’s a year of rebuilding with only two returning letterwinners.”