Sports

The Waukon volleyball team played through a winless week of five matches, including a pair of Northeast Iowa Conference bouts against top 15-rated teams and a weekend tournament featuring another highly-regarded foe. The Indians first fell at home to Class 3A ninth-rated New Hampton Monday, September 24 and then at Class 4A seventh-rated Waverly-Shell Rock Tuesday, September 25 before being eliminated early from the Waterloo Columbus Tournament Saturday, September 29 with losses to Class 1A fourth-rated Starmont, Marion and Waterloo East.

Now with a 10-12-4 season record, 1-3 in Northeast Iowa Conference play, the Indians were next scheduled to play at Crestwood Tuesday, October 2 before playing in the Hudson Tournament Saturday, October 6. The net Tribe will then play at Charles City Tuesday, October 9 and then prepare for its Northeast Iowa Conference Tournament to be played at Decorah Saturday, October 13.

For the second consecutive week, the Kee volleyball team had just one match on its slate, as the Hawk netters played host to West Central Thursday, September 27 in just their second home match of the season. Still in search of their first win in Upper Iowa Conference play this season, the Lady Hawks fended off a three-set sweep but ultimately fell in four sets to the visiting Blue Devils.

West Central used a nine-point run early in the opening set to pull away to a 1-10 advantage, directly adding another six-point surge to dig the Kee deficit to 3-16. The Hawks could not manage any more than two points in their service series in the set, ultimately suffering the 9-25 defeat.

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The Waukon football team traveled to Oelwein Friday, September 28 to play what many may consider a “trap” game, with the traditionally-troubled Husky program having won just two games in its previous six seasons combined and in search of its first Class 2A District 4 victory after coming off a 54-0 district-opening loss to a single-loss Waterloo Columbus team the previous week, with the Indians staring at that same Columbus team next on their schedule. This season’s Huskies, however, have already equaled the win total of their last six seasons and battled the football Tribe to an even first quarter before the Indians found their bearings and rattled off 38 unanswered points on the way to a 46-16 Waukon victory.

The team of Brad Groe, Neil Schmidt and Tim Honn won the Fall Three-Man Best Shot Tournament at the Waukon Golf and Country Club Saturday, September 15 with a team score of 57, 13 strokes under par. A total of 26 teams participated in this annual club tournament. Flight winners were as follows:

Championship Flight
Brad Groe/Neil Schmidt/Tim Honn - 57
Dave Spiegler/Corey Shelton/Eric Shelton - 58
Ron Curtin/Jeremy Curtin/Chad Curtin - 60
Wayne Sawyer/Matt Garrett/Dennis DeBuhr - 61

First Flight
Russ Martin/Mark Thies/Tom Plein - 66
Dan Treangen/Jonathan Williams/Chris Mahan - 66
Brian Cota/Brett Cota/Jason Bahr - 67

Second Flight
Gregg Jones/Dolan Jones/Luke Zezulka - 71
Dennis Kloke/Dan Straate/Gary Lane - 71
Russ Young/Dale Averhoff/Paul Manson - 71

The Waukon volleyball team had its lightest week of competition for this season play out to a heavy result when the Indians hosted Oelwein in Northeast Iowa Conference play Tuesday, September 18. Despite battling the visiting Huskies rather close throughout the night, the Tribe netters ended up being swept by their visitors in three straight sets by scores of 15-25, 20-25 and 20-25.

The Indians matched their Husky visitors fairly well on offense, hammering out 28 kills to Oelwein’s 31 winners at the net, with the Huskies committing 16 hitting errors and the net Tribe having 22 miscues. Although Oelwein didn’t do much damage at the service line, with just a single ace serve, it didn’t do itself much harm there either, missing just two serves in a total of 74 attempts at the line.

In a battle of Eight-Player District 3 teams each in search of their first district victory this season, the Kee football team put together an inspired effort in all facets of the game to emerge as that victor in its Friday, September 21 road test at West Central. The Hawks turned in their greatest offensive production of the season but coupled that with a strong defensive effort that resulted in five turnovers, four of those coming in the first half to help Kee bolt to a 36-0 headstart it would never look back from in securing the grid Hawks’ first win of the season, 36-6.

“We put our best half of football together in the first half,” Kee football coach Chad Winters said. “We had eight guys executing at a high level. If it wouldn’t have been for some ill-timed penalties that killed a couple drives and a fumble at the goal line going into score, we would’ve put the game away early.”

Even though the start to the start of Class 2A District 4 play for the Waukon football team proved to be somewhat of a challenge, perhaps that start to the grid Tribe’s Friday, September 21 home game against Monticello proved to be just what the grid Tribe needed in ultimately getting its District 4 season off to a successful start with a 40-12 victory. The game’s first exchange of possessions saw the Indians give up a long scoring drive downfield followed by an immediate turnover for an early 6-0 hole that threatened to grow bigger, but the Indians ultimately recovered on both sides of the football to rattle off a 34-0 run over the next two quarters’ time to begin their District 4 campaign with a convincing victory.

Returning to the scene of the only crime in last season’s Class 2A State Championship run, it was the Waukon football team that stole some early possessions and certainly took away the game’s early momentum in rolling to a 40-21 victory at Cascade Friday, September 14. The host Cougars provided the only blemish - a 20-25 road loss - on the Indians’ best-ever season and run to the Class 2A crown last fall, but the champions of the grid Tribe’s Class 2A District 4 last season have dropped to Class 1A this fall and certainly had no answer for a 28-0 Indian headstart that featured capitalization on two of three early turnovers and another balanced grid Tribe attack that led the Indians to a 40-21 victory.

The Waukon volleyball team had just one event on its schedule this past week, its own home invitational tournament Saturday, September 15. Had Spring Grove, MN not been invited to that event, the Tribe netters apparently would have claimed their own tournament crown, as the only two losses the Indians suffered Saturday were both to Spring Grove in straight sets as the Lions, instead, played their way to this season’s tournament championship, defeating the Tribe both in their four-team pool match and again in the semifinals of the tournament’s championship bracket on the way to Spring Grove also defeating MFL/MarMac, 21-8 and 21-13, in the tournament championship game to finish undefeated on the day.

The Kee football team knew it would have its hands full heading into its Friday, September 14 home game with a Central City team that was undefeated, was averaging just under 60 points per game and featured one of the state’s leading rushers in senior Trey Holub with a per carry average of just over 24 yards per carry. Although the football Hawks held Holub nearly a third below his per carry average, he still managed to rack up 139 yards of offense and three touchdowns while getting considerable help from his teammates in finishing right near the Wildcats’ scoring average with a 60-12 Kee defeat.