Sports

The 2014 Waukon boys cross country season provided a great deal of “firsts” for fourth-year head coach Tara Stein, the greatest among those being the first time she has coached a team or individual runner to State Meet qualification. After a five-year complete absence from the season grand finale held at Fort Dodge each season, Coach Stein guided both her team - with its third-place State Qualifying Meet finish - and an individual runner - sophomore Tyler O’Neill and his seventh-place State Qualifying Meet finish - to every high school cross country team’s ultimate destination.

The 2014 Waukon volleyball team showed some fairly strong improvement in its second year under head coach Peyton Lapel, nearly doubling its match win total from last fall’s 9-25-4 overall record on the way to a 16-22 mark this season. The Indians didn’t make much headway from last season’s Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) result, finishing in sixth place once again with a 1-6 final record, but took some further steps forward in other aspects of the season.

Completion of the 2014 Kee cross country season brought with it an end to one of the largest displays of commitment the Hawk distance running program has seen in quite some time. Five seniors formed the upperclassman leadership core for this year’s team, including Keegan Ahouse, Tom Brennan, Michael Harris, Sam Hisel and Nolan Welsh, with Hisel and Welsh committing themselves to the sport for all four years of their high school career, Harris being a three-year high school competitor and Ahouse and Brennan participating in each of the last two seasons.

Following back-to-back seasons of State Play-Off qualification and two of the most successful seasons in program history, the 2014 Waukon football team was looking to continue that trend heading into this past fall. However, the injury bug and a formidable Class 2A District 3 schedule turned out less desirable results for this year’s gridiron gang, the Indians, instead, playing to a 3-6 overall record and a 2-4 mark that placed them fifth in the final District 3 standings.

The Kee girls basketball team will feature just one senior for the 2014-2015 season but will look to benefit from the return of five varsity letterwinners that helped produce a 12-9 overall record last season. Three juniors and one sophomore complete that list of varsity veteran returnees for a small and overall young squad of 16 players made up of the letterwinning senior and juniors, seven sophomores and five freshmen.

The Waukon girls basketball program will look to make a fresh start as its 2014-2015 season gets underway, but still with a considerable amount of familiarity in its personnel. Andy Sires will assume the head coaching role of the program for the first time, but brings with him the assistant coaching experience from the past 13 seasons that have included some of the most successful basketball played in Waukon High School history.

The all-purpose fields pictured above on the west edge of Waukon have gotten a great amount of use throughout their first full year of operation, being mainly used by Waukon Park and Recreation and Allamakee Community School District youth for athletic and other activities. As pictured above on a recent sunny fall weekend, the Waukon Park and Recreation Department’s flag football program made the most recent use of the fields for both weekday practices and Saturday games. A total of 128 area youth from Waukon, Lansing, Monona, Postville and Waterville took part in the third and fourth grade flag football program, while another 77 first and second graders from Waukon and Waterville participated in the NERF flag football program.

A relatively young Waukon girls cross country team with a first-year head coach improved by great strides, literally, throughout this 2014 season to bring themselves to the brink of the most coveted destination at season’s end. The Lady Indian distance dandies worked through a tough season of training under first-year coach Brett Egan to finally realize the pay-off of all that hard work, finishing just one team placewinning shy of qualifying for the Class 2A State Cross Country Meet, an end result that proved to be bittersweet, but an overall pleasant surprise for all involved.

The 2014 Kee football season was brought to a close in a game where all teams desire to be Wednesday, October 29, but, unfortunately, by a less than desirable, 65-12 final result. Qualifying for every team’s ultimate destination - the State Play-Offs - for the sixth consecutive season as this season’s fourth-place team in Eight-Player District 4, the Hawks were matched up with the top-seeded team from District 3, Eight-Player’s second-rated and undefeated Janesville Wildcats, in that opening State Play-Off round. The loss ends Kee’s season at a 6-4 overall record, including a 3-3 Eight-Player District 4 record that placed the Hawks fourth and qualified them for the Eight-Player State Play-Offs for the sixth year in a row. Janesville advanced on to a Monday, November 3 second-round match-up with HLV-Victor, where they lost a 52-51 heartbreaker to have their season  ended with their first defeat.

The Kee volleyball team had its 2014 season brought to a close by an all too familiar foe in the quarterfinal round of the Class 1A Regional Tournament Tuesday, October 28. For the third time in each of the last four seasons, the Hawks have had their season ended by fellow Upper Iowa Conference team Turkey Valley, this time in three sets by scores of 15-25, 20-25 and 23-25.
The loss completes Kee’s season with an overall record of 12-17. In addition to the end of this 2014 season, the match loss also marks the end of the high school volleyball careers for seniors Sadie Hill, Val Meyer, Nicole Vinson and Molly Walleser.