Sports

Waukon wrestling 182-pound senior Blain Swenson will be among the top senior wrestlers from northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota who will face off in the 16th annual Iowa-Minnesota All-Star Border Battle dual meet at 7 p.m. this Friday, March 10 at Crestwood High School in Cresco. The event is sponsored by the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame housed in Cresco, and tickets for the event will be sold at the door at Crestwood High School. Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame President and event organizer Dennis Meirick noted wrestlers from Crestwood, Waukon, Decorah, Osage, South Winneshiek, MFL/MarMac, Postville, Sumner-Fredericksburg and North Fayette Valley have been invited to wrestle for the Iowa squad, which holds an 8-7 series advantage over the Minnesota squad.
 

The Northeast Iowa Rugby Club will be kicking off its fifth season as a club this spring. The club is comprised of members from around the tri-state area who range in age from 18 to 51 years old. The Club is always welcoming new members that may be interested in playing and/or as a social member. Right now the club has enough male members to field a male side (team), and women are also welcome to join. The goal of the club is to start a women’s side and an under 18 or high school side. The mission of the club is to grow the sport of rugby in the northeast Iowa area, while also contributing to the communities that its members reside through donations of time, labor and monetarily. The tentative spring schedule for the Northeast Iowa Rugby spring season includes the following: March 18 at Osage; March 25 at Clinton; April 8 vs. Bremer County (home games played in Decorah); May 6 at All Iowa Tournament in Iowa Falls; May 20 vs. River City (Mason City) in game held at West Union.

The Waukon High School cheerleaders offer their Little Indians Cheer Camp every year around the same time as the holiday break to help raise funds for new cheer uniforms. This year, the camp was held January 2 to learn cheers, dance, jumps, kicks and stunts. The youngest group or cheerleaders (pictured above) participated in the morning, ranging in ages from Pre-Kindergarten through second grade. The afternoon session involved kids in third grade up to eighth grade (pictured below). Due to weather cancellations, the little cheerleaders’ performance following the camp was postponed to January 5. The youngest kids performed at halftime of the JV game and the older kids performed at halftime of the varsity game that night. Participation numbers were reported as being up this year with around 130 kids registered. Submitted photos.

The Allamakee Sno-Blazers snowmobile club hosted its first annual Radar Run snowmobile speed event Saturday, February 11 at Green Valley Getaway in Waukon. The club previously sponsored local snowmobile drag races for many years, and this inaugural replacement event featured a 450-foot track that the 120 combined spectators and competitors found to be fast and entertaining.  A listing of the fastest finishers in each of the event’s eight classes of competition appears below:

Vintage 340cc - Bob Timmerman
Vintage 440cc - Kevin Benjegerdes
Vintage 500cc - Bob Timmerman
Modern Stock 500cc - Clayton Welsh
Modern Stock 600cc - Andrew Eberling
Modern Stock 700cc - Andrew Eberling
Modern Stock 800cc - Jason Bellmeyer
1000cc/Modified - Bryce D.

January 27-28, four wrestlers from Iowa traveled to Louisville, KY in order to compete in a tournament sponsored by the North Central Association of Schools for the Blind (NCASB). Buoyed by a team effort that resulted in all four wrestlers earning medals in their respective weight classes, the Iowa Rams battled their way to a fifth-place team finish among the 11 teams competing at the event. The Iowa Rams were coached by 1974 Waukon High School graduate Jay Colsch with assistance from Charles Gillaspie and 2016 Waukon High School graduate Carter Fuhrman. Pictured in the center of the above photo are (left to right) Jay Colsch and Carter Fuhrman, and Fuhrman is also pictured below (far right) with the four members of the Iowa Rams squad during their competition in Kentucky. Currently, there are 13 schools in the NCASB Conference.

The Waukon bowling team had its inaugural season brought to a close, missing out on the championship finish or at-large bid necessary in either team or individual scoring to advance on to the State Tournament from their Tuesday, February 14 Class 1A District Tournament at Cascade. The Waukon girls bowled to a fifth-place team finish in their district competition, while the Indian boys ended up sixth.

“Overall, I was happy with how we performed,” Waukon bowling coach Jerry Keenan said. “The boys were within 12 of their high score for the season.  (Senior) Austin Day and (freshman) Zech Brink had their high scores of the season. The girls were extremely consistent on the day in their individual games.”

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The third time was not charmed when the Kee boys basketball team faced off against fellow Upper Iowa Conference squad Turkey Valley in the opening round of Class 1A District Tournament play Thursday, February 16 at Postville High School. But it certainly looked like it could have been and, at the very least, was improved from the previous two match-ups. Having fallen to the Trojans by margins of 13 points after suffering at least one double-digit outscoring quarter in each of their two regular season match-ups, the Hawks never trailed at the end of any of the game’s first three quarters and remained tied with just over two minutes left, only to suffer a 9-2 final outscoring in those final two minutes to have their season ended by a 49-42 defeat.

The Kee girls basketball team was once again putting together another brilliant postseason tournament run this past week, the Lady Hawks winning 2.98 games over a six-night span to earn their third consecutive trip to the Class 1A regional semifinals and bring their season to the brink of a second consecutive State Tournament appearance. It was the final two-hundredths of that postseason journey, however, that prevented the Hawks’ season from going over that season grand finale edge once again and punching their ticket for a return trip to Des Moines, as they came up about 30 seconds shy of doing so.

Waukon wrestling 182-pound senior Blain Swenson had his season and high school wrestling career brought to a close with a pair of losses on the opening night in his first-ever qualification for the Class 2A State Tournament in Des Moines Thursday, February 16. Swenson opened the season grand finale with a 9-3 loss to fellow Northeast Iowa Conference mat senior Alex Koehler of Charles City (24-12). That loss forced Swenson to have to wrestle again that same Thursday night in a first-round consolation battle against fourth-rated senior Kyle Benson of Sergeant Bluff-Luton (46-8), who lost by opening-round fall in 3:47 to ninth-rated Dubuque Wahlert junior Boone McDermott (32-5). Swenson took Benson down first in the match, but Benson was able to work a second period reversal that he eventually turned into a fall in 2:34 and an end to Swenson's State Tournament debut.

The Waukon girls basketball team brought both its regular season and overall 2016-2017 season to a close this past week by differing results. The Lady Indians wrapped up their regular season with a 41-37 win at Decorah Tuesday, February 7 before having their season ended by one of the best teams not only in their Northeast Iowa Conference but also in Iowa’s Class 3A, falling by a 50-27 result at third-rated Crestwood in the opening round of Class 3A regional tournament play Saturday, February 11.

The loss to Crestwood ends the Indians’ season at an 11-11 record overall, including a 5-7 mark that placed the Indians in a tie for fourth place in the Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC). Crestwood advanced on to the regional semifinals, where the Cadets will play fellow NEIC squad New Hampton Wednesday, February 15.