Sports

It was a happy Homecoming for the Waukon football team Friday, October 4 as the top-rated Indian grid squad had little trouble with a visiting Oelwein Husky team still in search of its first Class 2A District 3 win in bringing a 2-3 season record to Waukon’s Homecoming venue and leaving with a 55-14 defeat.

The Huskies did boast Class 2A’s leading rusher coming into the game in junior Gage Voshell, who came into the contest averaging results of 28 carries, 176 yards and two touchdowns per game, but the Indian defense stifled the Oelwein workhorse to just 35 yards on 12 carries without a touchdown, while the Tribe bolted to a 42-0 headstart before trading late touchdowns between their reserve players.

The Waukon volleyball team had a busy book-end to a very challenging week this past week, half of this week’s opponents being ranked within the top 15 of their respective classes in five total matches. The initial part of that book-end was the gauntlet of facing the top two teams from the Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC), the NEIC undefeated pair of Class 3A sixth-rated New Hampton and Class 4A sixth-rated Waverly-Shell Rock, on back-to-back nights, the Tribe falling to both in three sets each, 20-25, 13-25 and 11-25 at the home of the Chickasaws Monday, September 30 and then at home to the visiting Go-Hawks Tuesday, October 1 by scores of 8-25, 16-25 and 14-25.

The Kee volleyball team was able to secure its first win in Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) play this past week in splitting a pair of UIC matches. The Lady Hawks first fell at home to Clayton Ridge Tuesday, October 1 in four sets, 25-18, 20-25, 13-25 and 21-25, before battling through a five-set marathon at South Winneshiek Thursday, October 3 to clinch their first Upper Iowa Conference win of the season.

Holding a 3-16 season record, 1-4 in Upper Iowa Conference play at this point in the season, the Hawks were next scheduled to play at Postville Tuesday, October 8 before hosting MFL/MarMac Thursday, October 10 and then playing in the Riceville Tournament Saturday, October 12. The Kee girls will then wrap up their regular season dual match schedule by hosting Turkey Valley Monday, October 14.

After coming off its first victory of the season last Friday, the Kee football team faced the unenviable task of traveling to the home of an undefeated Turkey Valley team ranked as high as second in some Eight-Player polls Friday, October 4. The highly-regarded Trojans had averaged nearly 58 points a game in playing to a 5-0 start to this season, and although the Hawks battled hard early on, their Turkey Valley hosts used some big plays and some Kee misfortune to break open the game and maintain their scoring average in dealing the Hawks a 60-0 defeat.

The Kee volleyball team battled through a pair of dual matches this past week, coming up short in each of those two battles on different ends of the spectrum. The Lady Hawks first fell to Wauzeka-Steuben out of Wisconsin in non-conference play at home Monday, September 23 in straight sets, 20-25, 6-25 and 23-25, before pulling out one of four sets at West Central with a 25-23 win but also falling by scores of 17-25, 10-25 and 18-25 in that Upper Iowa Conference road match-up.

Holding a 2-15 season record, 0-3 in Upper Iowa Conference play at this point in the season, the Hawks were next scheduled to host Clayton Ridge Tuesday, October 1 before playing at South Winneshiek Thursday, October 3, both of those matches being Upper Iowa Conference contest. Kee’s net squad will then compete in a busy week the following week with a road date at Postville Tuesday, October 8, hosting MFL/MarMac Thursday, October 10 and then playing in the Riceville Tournament Saturday, October 12.

The Kee football team made it the happiest of Homecomings as the Hawks picked up their first win of the season, and in convincing fashion, with a 44-14 Homecoming hurrah over West Central Friday, September 27. An equally effective attack on both sides of the line of scrimmage saw the Hawks find the end zone on all but one of their first seven drives of the game while Kee’s defense proved just as effective in limiting the visiting Blue Devils to just one tally in their first six drives of the ballgame, the Hawks bolting to a 22-0 headstart in the first quarter they would never look back from.

The Hawks will hit the road this Friday, October 4 for a sizable task in facing Eight-Player second-rated Turkey Valley, a team boasting a 5-0 season record and coming off a 48-10 home victory over Central City this past Friday. The highly-regarded Trojans have outscored their opponents by a combined score of 288-75 so far this season.

The Waukon girls cross country team continued its recent achievement of team finishes within the top half of meet fields, the Lady Indians doing so on their home course this time around with a fourth-place finish out of 10 teams - more than half of them ranked - at the Waukon Invitational Tuesday, September 24. The distance Tribe benefited from a pack performance of all five of its scored runners within the meet’s top 31 places in the 159-runner field and finishing within a minute and a half of one another. That large field was the result of both the varsity and junior varsity races being run together due to pending weather concerns, with no junior varsity team scores being recorded.

Although it was a match-up of two teams with equal unbeaten records of 4-0 ranked on each end of some Iowa high school football top-10 rankings, the top-rated Waukon football team’s Friday, September 27 Class 2A District 4 opener at 10th-rated Monticello was anything but equal in a 52-7 Indian victory that was actually delayed in starting for an hour by rainy weather. The match-up also featured the top two passing teams in Class 2A District 4, but the Indians proved to the host Panthers that quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality, as they used three interceptions, two fumble recoveries and relentless defensive pressure to limit Monticello’s district-leading passing game to considerably less than its 277-yard aerial average per game and a lone late touchdown against Tribe reserves, the Indians tossing three touchdowns on the way to 200 yards of their own through the air.

The final tune-up for the Waukon football team prior to the start of its Class 2A District 4 schedule showed a powerful engine running on all cylinders as the Indians rolled over Class 1A Cascade by a 42-13 final result at home Friday, September 20 in their final non-district game of the regular season. The Cougars that once owned the only win over the grid Tribe’s State Championship team two seasons ago have since fallen on harder times as they’ve dropped to Class 1A, not having enough football participation this season to allow for a freshman game to be played prior to Friday’s varsity game and ultimately not being able to keep up with an Indian attack that bolted to a 36-0 halftime lead and held a 42-0 fourth quarter advantage before allowing two late Cascade scores.

The Waukon boys cross country team competed in another large meet with a unique scoring format when the Indians traveled to Starmont Tuesday, September 17. The team scoring for the meet was recorded both overall in a 22-team format and also further broken down separately for Class 1A schools and Class 2A/Class 3A schools.

Unfortunately, the Indian varsity team did not have enough runners to create a team score in that highest level of competition. The distance Tribe ran just four runners, but had all four of those competitors finish within the top 49 runners in the 157-runner overall varsity boys field and within the top 31 of the 79-runner field of Class 2A/3A competitors.

The Indians were next scheduled to host their own home invitational Tuesday, September 24. The distance Tribe will then have more than a week free from competition before returning to the course Saturday, October 5 at the Crestwood Invitational at Cresco.