Sports

The Waukon boys wrestling team will field one of its largest squads in recent years, as 44 young men have reported for early-season work-outs as the 2023-2024 season gets underway. Within that larger squad lies another considerable number of returning matmen who bring back enough varsity letterwinning experience to nearly fill an entire line-up, as 14 varsity veterans come back from last winter to provide leadership for a mix of wrestling experience and skill levels making up this season’s squad.

“We have 44 boys out this season,” Waukon wrestling head coach Mason Berns said. “An excellent number with many fun dynamics. It’s exciting to see young men discover the positives wrestling has to offer to a growing young person. I have wrestlers that this is their first-ever season and wrestlers that have wrestled since they were able to crawl. Watching them take care of each other, simply put, is awesome.”

The Kee boys basketball team will be benefiting from the return of nearly every one of its players from a squad last winter that played to a 7-15 season record and had just one senior on its roster. That large returning squad includes seven varsity letterwinners from last season that include a senior class of just two players this season.

That senior pair includes Kaleb Drape and Andrew Kolsrud, and those two most veteran upperclassmen are joined by five juniors, three of whom broke on to the varsity scene two seasons ago already as freshmen. Jordan Cota, Brayden Darling, Dalton Mudderman, Jarod Reams and Karsen Strong round out this season’s list of returning varsity veterans.

The 2023-2024 Waukon girls basketball season will feature a mix of familiarity and some new faces in new places as a collection of players from all four high school grade levels will make up this season’s varsity squad for first-year Indian head coach John O’Neill. Within the 14 players donning a varsity uniform for the bucket Tribe this winter will be five seniors, three juniors, five sophomores and one freshman.

The Waukon girls wrestling team got its 2023 season underway at a large tournament hosted by Decorah High School Saturday, November 18, making some good first impressions for this initial competition of the new season. Eleven different young ladies took to the mat for the Indian grapplers in eight of the tournament’s 14 weight classes, with five of those mat ladies finishing in the top six placewinnings of their respective weight classes to rack up 92 team points and place the mat Tribe sixth in the final 16-team standings.

The Indian mat ladies will return to the mat following the Thanksgiving holiday, hosting Crestwood Tuesday, November 28 before competing in the Coralville Tournament Thursday and Friday, November 30 and December 1. They will then host Waverly-Shell Rock in a girl/boy double-dual format Thursday, December 7 before competing in the Luther Tournament in Decorah Friday, December 8.

The Waukon bowling program continues to maintain its good level of participation as the 2023-2024 season gets underway, with both the Waukon girls and Waukon boys teams featuring double-digit numbers in team members for this winter’s campaign. The Lady Indians actually grew a bit from last season, as 11 young women take to the lanes for this season, while the boys also stayed right in that low double-digit participation number with 12 young men reporting for early-season practice this winter.

Within the combined 23 participants between those two squads, a total of eight of them return with varsity letterwinning experience from last season. The Waukon boys will return two of those seasoned bowlers, while the bowling girls will benefit from the return of nearly their entire team from last winter, including six with veteran experience from a squad that lost just one dual match in 10 tries last winter.

The 2023-2024 Kee girls basketball team will benefit from the return of eight letterwinners from a team of 12 players last season that played to a 7-14 overall season record. A majority of those eight returning veterans will still be just in their second year of high school basketball, as five sophomores, two juniors and one senior will lead the Hawks’ veteran experience gained a season ago.

The Lady Hawks were scheduled to get their 2023-2024 season underway Tuesday, November 21 against one of those fellow Upper Iowa Conference squads, as they travel to Turkey Valley. They will then return from the Thanksgiving break to host Central Elkader Tuesday, November 28.

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Following the graduation of a large class of nearly two dozen seniors from last season and returning one of its smallest collections of both returning letterwinners and seniors in recent memory this past fall, the Waukon football team pushed through those challenges and nearly everyone’s expectations for this 2023 season to return to a very familiar place. While those expectations saw speculation throughout the spectrum of results, the football Tribe played its way to a 5-4 season record that included a 4-1 record in Class 2A District 3 play that lifted the Indians to their sixth consecutive Class 2A district championship and their 10th Class 2A State Play-Off qualification in the past 12 seasons since joining those 2A ranks.

The Waukon volleyball team played to a season record of 8-19 during its 2023 campaign under first-year head coach Carley Sweeney. Included in that overall season mark was a step forward for the net Tribe in its Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) result, as a late September home victory over Decorah in a five-set marathon marked the first NEIC dual match victory for the Indians in just over two years’ time. That lone NEIC dual match victory tied the net Tribe with those same Vikings with a single league win each, but gave the Indians the head-to-head advantage for fifth place in this season’s final six-team standings.

The 2023 Kee football team played its way to every team’s desired destination, riding a series of ups and downs to a State Play-Off berth and ultimately a winning record for this past fall’s campaign at 5-4. Included in that overall winning mark was an even more successful 4-2 result in Eight-Player District 3 play that placed the grid Hawks in third place in District 3 and earned them automatic qualification for postseason play.

The Decorah girls swimming and diving team has qualified three events for the State Swimming and Diving Meet to be held this weekend, November 10-11, at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA, and Waukon High School sophomore Avalea Burns is a member of the lone Viking relay event to earn that advancement to the season grand finale. Burns and Waukon High School junior Reagan Lubahn have been competing for Decorah in the pool this fall season.

The State Meet qualifications came on the Lady Vikings’ efforts at their Regional Meet held in Dubuque Saturday, November 4, with Burns being the only Waukon competitor listed as competing for the Vikings in Saturday’s Regional Meet. Decorah tallied 119 points to finish eighth in the final eight-team standings at the event, with Iowa City West winning that team race with its championship total of 455 points.