Sports

Continuing its recent trend of competing in large invitational meets, the Waukon boys cross country team took part in the Starmont Invitational Tuesday, September 13 in a sizable field of 22 varsity teams that featured 151 runners overall at the varsity level of competition. Placing all five of their scored runners within the top 20 of that large overall field, the distance Tribe could not quite overcome an Oelwein effort that placed its top four runners within the meet’s top 10 overall competitors, as the Huskies scored 50 points to win the meet and the distance Indians finished as the meet runner-up with their 66 team points.

The meet also featured a further breakdown of team scoring between small and larger schools, with Class 1A teams garnering their own team scoring and the remainder of the larger schools having one tallied for them as well. Oelwein and the Indians also topped that larger school field of 16 Class 2A, 3A and 4A teams competing at the meet.

Still looking for its first win of the 2022 season, the Waukon football team accomplished that feat at one of the most opportune times to put Class 2A District 4 on alert. Having started the season 0-3 for the first time in over a decade, the gridiron Tribe was faced with opening its District 4 campaign with what looked to be this season’s greatest challenge within the district, playing an undefeated North Fayette Valley team ranked fifth in Class 2A in the TigerHawks’ Homecoming game Friday, September 16.

For more complete coverage, pick up this week's print edition or subscribe to our e-edition by clicking here.

The Kee girls and boys cross country teams competed at the Central Elkader Invitational Tuesday, September 13. The Kee girls were able to field just enough runners to compile a team score on the way to finishing fifth in their six-team field, and the Kee boys were just one runner shy of being able to piece together a team score but were highlighted by a top-10 individual finish.

The Lady Hawks had all five of their runners at the meet factor into their team score at Central. The Kee girls tallied 118 team points to finish in fifth place, ahead of Clayton Ridge.

The cross country Hawks were scheduled to next compete at the Waukon Invitational Tuesday, September 20 and run at the De Soto Invitational in Wisconsin scheduled for Saturday, September 24. The Kee distance crew will then compete in the Jesup Invitational Tuesday, September 27 before competing in another Saturday meet October 1 at Waverly.

A strong start and an overall balanced attack allowed the Kee football team to piece together its first win streak of the season when the Hawks traveled to Janesville Friday, September 16. Initially facing the possibility of not being able to play a game at all when their original September 16 opponent, Calamus-Wheatland, announced it could not field a varsity football team this season, the Hawks were able to schedule a game at Janesville, bolting to a 30-6 lead by the halftime break before fighting off some injury adversity and a Wildcat comeback effort to secure its second consecutive win, 48-34.

“We played some great football in the first half in all phases of the game,” Kee football coach Chad Winters said. “We were well balanced on offense and did a much better job tackling than what we had been doing. We had a couple guys go down, so we had to move some guys around a bit. We made a couple mistakes in the second half that allowed them to get back into the game.”

Trying to avoid the program’s first 0-3 start to a season in over a decade - dating back to its final campaign as a Class 3A squad when a 0-5 start led to a 2-7 final mark in 2011, the Waukon football team was playing host to its final larger school non-district opponent of the season when Crestwood came to town Friday, September 9. Being able to avoid their early two-touchdown deficits that proved insurmountable in their first two losses of the season, the Indians instead suffered that fate to open the game’s second half that saw them give up 30 unanswered points and watch a 7-7 halftime scoreboard knot erode away to suffering a 44-20 loss.

The Waukon volleyball team played another full week of dual and tournament play this past week, recording four victories in its total of seven matches played during the week and having all three losses come to highly-rated opponents. The net Tribe was dealt its first dual match loss of this fall in a Tuesday, September 6 home Northeast Iowa Conference match-up with Class 4A third-rated Waverly-Shell Rock, who dealt the Indians losses of 7-25, 14-25 and 17-25. The Indians then played in the Kepros Tournament hosted by Crestwood High School in Cresco Saturday, September 10, winning four of six matches to finish in second place at the tournament, with both of their losses coming to Class 2A sixth-rated Lisbon, including in the title match.

In search of its first victory of the young 2022 season, the Kee football team made the long trip to Springville for an Eight-Player District 5 battle against an Oriole squad also in search of its first win this fall. After fighting through a first half battle that played out nearly evenly on the scoreboard, the upperhand the Hawks truly held in the ballgame was much more evident in the second half as the Kee grid squad broke the game open with 28 unanswered second half points on the way to a 52-23 victory.

“We played pretty solid football minus a few first half breakdowns that kept the game closer than it should’ve been early,” Kee football coach Chad Winters said of his team’s first victory of the season. “We were well balanced on the night offensively as we had three backs that ran for good yardage and were able to throw for three touchdowns as well.”

Battling back from an early two-touchdown deficit for the second consecutive game, the Waukon football team nearly pulled off that recovery in hosting Decorah to open the Tribe’s home schedule for the 2022 season Friday, September 2. Trailing by a 14-0 result just over four minutes into the contest and by as much as a 27-6 tally midway through the second quarter, the Indians rallied with 18 unanswered points and a second half shut-out by their defense but could not quite avoid the 27-24 defeat.

The Indians are next scheduled to remain at home to face yet another Northeast Iowa Conference foe when they host Crestwood this Friday, September 9. The Cadets opened the season with a 26-14 road win at Decorah before being shut-out by Waverly-Shell Rock, 35-0, this past Friday.

For more complete coverage, pick up this week's print edition or subscribe to our e-edition by clicking here.

The competition schedule for the Waukon volleyball team began to expand this past week, as the net Tribe opened and closed the week with multi-team events and put three of those five matches in the win column. The volleyball Indians opened the week with a home triangular event Monday, August 29 that saw them sweep both Riceville and Kee in two straight sets each, the Tribe first disposing of the Wildcats by scores of 25-21 and 25-20 before also taking care of the visiting Hawks by wider margins of 25-7 and 25-13.

Home, sweet home turned out to be not so sweet for the Kee football team as the grid Hawks played their first game at “The Pit” in Lansing Friday, September 2. Hosting a Central City squad that returned pretty much all of its young leadership from a 3-7 season last fall that included a 64-8 throttling handed to them by Kee early in that season, this fall’s young Hawks came up shy of finding the end zone in the contest but played the Wildcats to a fairly strong defensive effort in the first half, only to have that resistance wear down as the game wore on to a 48-0 Kee defeat.

The Hawks will make the long trip to Springville to continue District 5 play this Friday, September 9. The Orioles are also looking to rebound from a 0-2 start to their season this fall, coming off a 52-7 loss at Edgewood-Colesburg this past Friday after opening the season with another road loss, 57-22, at WACO of Wayland in Week 1 of this season.