Sports

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.

For the second consecutive season, the Waukon boys cross country team claimed its place among the top four teams in all of Class 2A at this year’s State Cross Country Meet held at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge Saturday, October 28. Having finished fourth at last season’s grand finale, and returning four of those seven runners and five runners overall with previous State Meet experience, the Tribe equaled that fourth-place result again this season, being bested this fall by another pair of repeat top performances from last fall and a tight pack finish from other teams ranked within this fall’s Class 2A top-10.

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One final competition for her high school cross country career saw Waukon girls cross country senior Mia Kurth run her way into the top half of the elite field at the Class 2A State Cross Country meet held at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge on a cold, breezy Saturday, October 28 that had temperatures falling just short of the freezing mark of 32 degrees. Competing in a field of 140 of the best distance runners Class 2A has to offer at that season grand finale, Kurth just clipped the top half of that meet field with her 70th-place finish in a time of 21:04.8, just a couple seconds off as much as four places higher in that season finale distance field.

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A return to the Class 1A State Meet for Kee boys cross country sophomore Justin Wagner resulted in improved steps forward in the many strides forward he took Friday, October 27 competing among the small school distance elite at this season’s grand finale held at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge. Despite temperatures just above freezing and a steady breeze likely dropping wind chills below that mark, Wagner was able to drop several places and nearly 20 seconds off his first-ever State Meet performance under much more ideal conditions last fall.

Riding the high of a sixth consecutive Class 2A district championship following a dramatic overtime victory one week earlier, the Waukon football team had that ride brought to a sudden halt in opening its seventh straight Class 2A State Play-Off berth - its 10th in the past 12 seasons - at home against a Union team from District 6 Friday, October 20. Trading an early touchdown tally each to start the contest, the Indians were then bitten hard by both the turnover and injury bug to have their season brought to a close with a 21-7 loss to a Knight squad that held a 2-6 overall record coming into the contest but had both of those wins come in its two previous games to build some late-season momentum.

The 2023 season came to a close for the Kee football team Friday, October 20 but not without a strong effort by the grid Hawks that made one of the highest-regarded teams in the Eight-Player class stand up and take notice in the opening round of the State Play-Offs. Traveling to the home of an eighth-rated Central City squad that boasted only a single loss on the season, Kee’s gridders battled to a halftime lead and a 28-28 scoreboard knot midway through the third quarter before the final three of seven Hawk turnovers in the ballgame helped turn the tide in the host Wildcats’ favor on the way to a 52-28 season-ending Kee defeat.

Competing “four” so much more!

That’s what the Waukon boys cross country team will be doing after qualifying for the Class 2A State Cross Country Meet for the fourth consecutive season at its State Qualifying Meet held at Monticello Thursday, October 19. That fourth consecutive qualification for the season grand finale came in championship style as the distance Tribe placed all seven of its runners within the top 21 individuals in the 97-runner field, including its five scored runners within the top 19 runners to score 49 team points and win this season’s State Qualifying Meet Championship.

The 2023 season for The Standard’s Halfback Harry contest has now drawn to a close, and the final week saw a battle between several entries that required some tie-breaking to figure out. A total of four entries emerged at the top of this week’s collection of contestants with five incorrect guesses each.

Jeremy Hogan, Verland Lenth and Bryan Ward of Waukon and Jan Pfiffner of Harpers Ferry were all locked atop this week’s entry pile with those five missed guesses, forcing the total winning points tie-breaker to be utilized to determine this week’s contest winner. With this week’s 15 winning teams compiling a total of 458 points, it was Ward’s guess of 421 team points that came closest to that total and gave him the final Halfback Harry victory of this season, edging out Hogan’s selection of 416 team points. Lenth’s choice of 505 points was just a bit further off, with Pfiffner guessing 622 points.

The Kee volleyball team brought its 2023 regular season schedule to a close with its final Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) match of the season as well, hosting MFL/MarMac Tuesday, October 10 on Pink Out Night for cancer awareness and honoring of those it impacts. With both teams coming into the contest with 1-6 records in UIC play, the Lady Hawks and visiting Bulldogs played to a match result nearly as close as their same UIC records, with MFL/MarMac finally pulling out the marathon match victory in the fifth and final set.

The loss wrapped up Kee’s regular season with a 2-18 season record that includes a 1-7 mark that places the Lady Hawks eighth in the final nine-team Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) standings. The Lady Hawks were scheduled to open Class 1A postseason tournament play Monday, October 16 at Starmont, with brief results of that match printed in the Wednesday, October 18, 2023 edition of the Standard.