Sports

Haley Meyer crowned Class 1A State Cross Country Champion as Kee girls finish 13th; Senior Chris Wagner wraps up his career among Class 1A elite

The season grand finale of the 2020 Iowa High School State Cross Country Championships held a bit of both grand and finale for the Kee cross country team.

The finale was not only the end of the Hawks’ 2020 campaign at the annual season climactic event held at Lakeside Golf Course near Fort Dodge Saturday, October 31, but also the end of the high school career for Kee’s lone senior competing this season, Chris Wagner, who competed for the second consecutive season in the Class 1A State Meet boys race.

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It wasn’t the beginning that Waukon Indian football fans have come to expect this season, but the final result certainly was, as the grid Tribe took another step forward down its Class 2A State Play-Off path Friday, October 30 with a 46-14 home win over Monticello. Although the Indians scored first, they found themselves trailing, 7-6 at the end of the first quarter, for the first time since their season-opening loss at Decorah, but rang up a 28-0 second quarter and 40 unanswered points on the way to advancement to this Friday’s Class 2A State Quarterfinals for a fourth consecutive season and the seventh time in the last nine years.

A first trip back to the Class 2A State Cross Country Meet since 2016 yielded a top-10 finish for the Waukon boys cross country team Saturday, October 31 at Lakeside Golf Course Fort Dodge. Ranked 11th coming into the season grand finale, and qualifying behind this season’s eventual Class 2A State Runner-Up, Tipton, the distance Tribe improved on that ranking by one spot and was ultimately three points out of even one place higher, tallying 242 team points to finish in 10th place among Class 2A’s 15 elite State Qualifying teams.

“What a great way to wrap up our season, with a 10th place finish at the State CC Meet on a very windy day!” Waukon boys cross country coach Tara Stein shared. “We went into the meet ranked 11th and our goal was to finish in the top 10, and that we did finishing just three points behind the ninth-place team.”

After opening this season’s unique State Play-Off format with a first-round victory last Friday, the Kee football team’s reward was a trip to Janesville Friday, October 23 to face a highly-regarded Wildcat team that was on a seven-game winning streak after a single, season-opening loss nearly two months ago. Despite that formidable task, the Hawks battled the host Wildcats to just a 14-point deficit before a series of unfortunate events right before the halftime break helped a 34-20 Kee deficit at that point snowball into a 62-20 hole by the end of the third frame.

“Give Janesville credit, they are a great football team that is peaking at the right time of the year,” Kee football coach Chad Winters said. “After their season-opening loss to Easton Valley where they dug themselves into a 20-0 hole, they have absolutely rolled everything in their path.”

A mild drought ended at the Class 2A State Qualifying Cross Country Meet at Jesup Thursday, October 22, but it had little to do with the rain that fell during that evening’s competition. After three consecutive seasons of missing out on qualifying for the season grand finale State Meet, the 12th-rated Waukon boys cross country team was able to bring an end to that high-end dry spell with a second-place team finish, scoring 100 team points to finish between the championship effort of second-rated Tipton and the final qualifying third-place team finish of 11th-rated North Fayette Valley, both of those teams also qualifying for this year’s season grand finale.

The Kee cross country teams had to wait a day to see if their 2020 season would be extended yet another week, as the Hawks’ Class 1A State Qualifying Meet hosted by Clayton Ridge High School at Guttenberg was postponed from Thursday, October 22 to Friday, October 23 due to rainy weather. That postponement proved to be well worth the wait for the distance Hawks, as they will once again have both their girls and boys programs represented at the State Meet season grand finale after earning full team qualification for the Lady Hawks for the fourth consecutive season and the boys having senior Chris Wagner also qualify among the state’s elite for the second consecutive season.

The first step down the Class 2A State Play-Off road proved to be a continuation of the journey the Waukon football team has traveled through all of its Class 2A opponents this season, as the Indians opened their postseason trail with a 56-14 home win over the  Forest City Indians Friday, October 23. The grid Tribe used a well-balanced offensive attack helped along by five turnovers secured by the defensive side of the ball that were all taken advantage, with five of the host Indians’ seven scoring drives in the contest covering 35 yards or less and another touchdown coming on a special teams play to complete a well-rounded home Indian effort overall.

The Kee football team got its 2020 postseason journey off to a strong start in posting a 50-24 home victory over fellow Upper Iowa Conference squad Turkey Valley Friday, October 16. Even though the points on the scoreboard tell the ultimate tale of victory, Kee football coach Chad Winters has no doubt that the Hawk win came at the line of scrimmage, where his offensive line allowed its backfield teammates to rush for nearly 400 yards on the ground and five of Kee’s seven touchdowns on the night.

The Kee volleyball team brought its regular season to a close, matching up against the final two Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) teams that the Lady Hawks had not faced yet in league match play this season. In those two final matches, however, the Kee netters ended up suffering the same fate as in their last five UIC bouts, coming up on the short end of the final result. The Hawks fell in three sets in both of those matches, doing so at Turkey Valley Tuesday, October 13 before suffering that same result at home against MFL/MarMac Thursday, October 15.

Finishing the regular season with a 4-11 record that included a 1-7 mark in Upper Iowa Conference play, the volleyball Hawks were next scheduled to begin their Class 1A regional tournament Monday, October 19 at Turkey Valley. Results of that Monday evening match are printed in a shaded box elsewhere on the Sports pages in the October 21, 2020 print edition and e-edition of the Standard.

The Waukon girls cross country team ran to a fifth-place team finish among their conference peers Tuesday, October 13 at the Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) Meet hosted by Crestwood in Cresco. The Indians were without their season-long front-runner, senior Annika Headington, due to quarantine precautions from COVID-19 close contact exposure last week, and tallied 123 team points while missing out on having any runners record a top-15 All-Conference finish.

The Indians are next scheduled to compete in their Class 2A State Qualifying Meet scheduled for Thursday, October 22 at Jesup at 4 p.m. Additional details about the distance Tribe’s State Qualifying Meet can be found in a shaded box elsewhere on the Sports pages in the October 21, 2020 print edition and e-edition of the Standard.