Sports

When second-year Kee cross country coach Pat Wagner says, “I definitely feel Kee’s boys and girls will make some strides in distance running this fall,” he’s not just talking about the steps taken by his Hawk runners as they navigate the course. Instead, it’s no loss of runners to graduation from last season and a considerable increase in female participation this year so that both the boys and girls squads can now compile a team score that has Coach Wagner seeing his Kee distance charges taking considerable steps forward with the strides they take.

“We lost no one to graduation, that should automatically make us better,” Coach Wagner said. “And we have added several quality people. I have been pleased with how early season workouts have gone. Cross country is a hard sport so you do have to do some work on a daily basis. The student athletes have come in and done that. They have shown enthusiasm, and we are off to a good start.”

A number of changes are taking place for this year’s Sports Drink Scrimmage and Allamakee Athletic Booster Club Membership Kick-Off that annually gets the athletic seasons underway at Waukon High School for the new school year. Although the traditional Booster Club membership meal and intrasquad scrimmages for the Waukon High School fall athletic teams will remain as staples of the annual event again this year, a featured speaker and “Meet the Team” introductions for each high school athletic team will be added to the evening’s events, which, will also all be held on a different night than usual this year - Thursday, August 18 instead of the traditional Friday evening due to a scheduling conflict.

Jordan Winke, age 17, of Albia won the overall woman’s division of the Nordic Fest Elvelopet 5k run held Saturday, July 30 in Decorah with a time of 19:42. She is the daughter of 1982 Waukon High School graduate Bill and Pam Winke, who currently reside in Albia, and the granddaughter of Jim and Shirley Winke of Waukon. Jordan is an accomplished runner having placed at the Iowa State Track Meet each year of her high school career thus far, including a third-place finish in the Class 2A 1500 meter run and a fifth-place finish in the 800 meter run this past spring as a junior. She will begin her senior year at Albia High School this fall. Her younger brother, Andrew is also a track stand-out, excelling at shorter distances. Submitted photo.
 

Former University of Iowa wrestling coach and Olympic wrestling champion Dan Gable will be the featured speaker at the annual Sports Drink Scrimmage being held at Waukon High School Thursday, August 18. The annual event is being switched to that Thursday from its traditional Friday date due to a scheduling conflict with the Waukon Corn Days event.

Additional changes to the annual scrimmage/membership event for the Allamakee Athletic Booster Club include the featured speaker this year, with wrestling legend Dan Gable speaking at 5 p.m., and a Meet the Team event, which will begin at 5:30 p.m. with introduction of this fall’s Waukon athletic teams. The membership meal begins at 4 p.m., with each team also scheduled to hold intrasquad scrimmages throughout the evening. See the advertisement printed below on this page for Booster Club membership and schedule details.
 

Each year the Waukon Swim Club honors swimmers with the Michael J. Hager Award given in memory of Michael J. Hager (1960-1991), who was the son of Bonnie and the late James Hager of Waukon. This year’s Michael J. Hager Award recipients are Bailey Shafer (left photo), daughter of Bill and Beth Shafer of Waukon, and Joe Schwartz (right photo), son of Dr. Dave and Joan Schwartz of Waukon.

Michael Hager loved swimming. In 1976, as a lifeguard at the pool, he started the Waukon Swim Club. He worked as a lifeguard, swam with the club and coached until he graduated from high school in 1978. He went on to attend college for one year at William Penn University and then transferred to Luther College, where he swam for the Norse for three years. Each summer, Hager would come home to coach the swim team and lifeguard at the pool until he graduated from Luther in 1982.

Austin Day of Waukon placed first overall at the Nordic Fest Elvelopet 5K Run held in Decorah Saturday, July 30. He topped the entire 404-runner field in a time of 18:35.62. He will be a senior at Waukon High School this fall. Submitted photo.
 

The Harpers Ferry Fireflies Granny Basketball Team played to a National Championship Saturday, July 23, sweeping three games at the National Granny Basketball Tournament held at the Lipscomb University Activity Center in Nashville, TN. The team defeated the Missouri Show Me Shooters, 42-20, in the first round before downing the Louisiana Crushers, 27-14, in the tournament semifinals and then winning the national crown with a 47-38 championship game triumph over the Cedar Rapids Late Bloomers, another team competing from the state of Iowa. Teams competing in the national tournament came from Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana and Iowa. The Fireflies' national championship follows their state of Iowa championship won just over a month earlier and wraps up an undefeated, 15-0 season for the team that is made up of players from the tri-state area of Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

After playing to an 11-22 season record last summer, the Kee baseball team was looking to make significant strides in just the second year of Coach Jim Mauss being at the helm of the Hawk diamond dweller program. Not only did strides get made in reversing that season record to a 24-15 tally for the Hawks this season, but even further steps were taken all the way to the top of where Kee baseball has not been able to venture in the two previous seasons, the Hawks claiming the Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) season championship for the first time since the 2013 season with a 14-2 UIC mark.

Having graduated two-thirds of his starting line-up from one of its better recent seasons last summer, Waukon baseball head coach Jerry Keenan knew there would be some growing pains heading into the 2016 season. Some of those pains resulted in a 7-22 overall record for the baseball Tribe’s recently completed summer campaign, but it was the growth that reached its pinnacle at season’s end that Coach Keenan was most pleased with, resulting in the Indians tallying their first postseason tournament win since the 2011 season and being within a base hit of earning another tournament triumph over one of the top teams in Class 2A.

It was two seasons ago that the Kee softball team sent shockwaves through the Class 1A softball ranks by playing to a State Tournament Runner-Up finish after heading into the season-ending tournament unranked. Riding that wave ever since - mostly up but sometimes down, including missing out on a return trip to the season grand finale last summer, the Hawks climbed atop the crest of that wake this season and rode it all the way to its pinnacle, the Class 1A State Tournament Championship.