Sports

The Kee volleyball team brought its regular season schedule to a close this past week with one final opportunity to secure its first Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) match win of the season when the Lady Hawks hosted Clayton Ridge Tuesday, October 15. With five of the visiting Eagles’ seven match wins this season being in UIC action, the match ended up continuing each squad’s conference fate in league play, as the Hawks fell in three consecutive sets.

The volleyball Hawks were next scheduled to begin their Class 1A regional tournament trail Monday, October 21 at and against fellow UIC squad Turkey Valley.

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Hawks travel to fifth-rated Gladbrook-Reinbeck to start Eight-Player postseason

The Kee football team knew it was going to have its hands full in wrapping up its regular season at undefeated Edgewood-Colesburg (Ed-Co) in a non-district clash Friday, October 18. Unfortunately, the Hawks made the host Vikings’ hands full as well early in the contest, as four of Kee’s first five drives of the contest filled Ed-Co’s hands with three interceptions and a fumble recovery that gave an already potent Viking offense many more opportunities the host squad didn’t miss out on in scoring on all but two of its nine possessions on the night while the Hawks were held to their lowest scoring total of the season in suffering a 49-6 defeat.

The Waukon volleyball team played in its final competition event prior to postseason tournament action, taking part in what is destined to be the last-ever Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) Tournament Saturday, October 19 hosted by Crestwood High School in Cresco. Having played through the NEIC dual match season without a match win and just a single set win against their four fellow NEIC foes, the Indian netters remained without a match win in their four matches at Saturday’s NEIC finale, being swept by Charles City, Crestwood, Decorah and New Hampton in two sets each to end up in fifth place in the final tournament team results.

A final regular season home game and final match-up in Eight-Player District 3 resulted in the Kee football team wrapping up both those aspects of this season’s schedule in victorious fashion, further solidifying automatic State Play-Off qualification in the process for a second consecutive season. With the Hawk defense turning in its second consecutive shining effort without an offensive touchdown - its third such defensive result of this season, Kee head coach Chad Winters felt his team’s offensive effort could have been even brighter than it was in what ended up being a 44-0 Hawk victory.

With its State Play-Off road laid out in front of it, the Waukon football team experienced a bump in that road when the Indians made a trip to Osage Friday, October 11 to play a Green Devil squad recently revived by the return of its starting quarterback, junior Quinn Street. The grid Tribe was victimized by a complete effort in all phases of the game by Osage, as four of the Green Devils’ six scoring drives came from 50 yards or more, including one on special teams, in addition to coming away with three turnovers on defense, two of which were capitalized on with touchdowns to further overshadow any momentum the Indians could build on the way to a 42-6 Waukon defeat.

The Waukon volleyball team had just one competition date on its schedule this past week, and that opportunity offered one final chance to record a win in Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) play as the Lady Indians hosted New Hampton in its final match of both its NEIC and regular season schedule. Despite a strong battle late into most of the match sets, the net Tribe ended up on the short end of each of three sets by scores of 25-20, 25-15 and 25-19 to surrender the match.

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.”