Sports

Despite graduating more than half of its starting line-up from last season’s squad that finished 15-8 overall, the 2025-2026 Waukon girls basketball team will still return plenty of varsity letterwinning experience for this winter’s campaign. That returning experience will include nearly enough girls to formulate a starting line-up, as four young ladies come back as veteran players this season to lead a squad of 20 overall members of the high school program.

Those four include a pair each of seniors and juniors, and they cover every aspect on the floor with a pair of post players, a forward and a guard. The senior pair of guard Elle Wilkins and post player Willa Troendle will be further complemented by the junior tandem of post player Blythe Bucknell and forward Bryiah Stewart.

The Waukon girls and boys bowling teams are coming from different directions in their seasons last winter and will have some different levels of returning experience in leading their respective 2025-2026 lane campaigns. Guiding whatever level of leadership is returning for this winter’s season will be an individual bringing his own mix of experience, as Jesse Peterson will fully take the head coaching reins of the program this season after previously assisting the bowling Tribe and serving as a co-head coach last year.

“This season is my 32nd year of bowling in adult leagues,” Peterson offered in regard to his own bowling experience. “I have attended a few bowling coaching clinics as well as talked with a couple college coaches, when my daughter (2021 Waukon High School graduate Taylor Peterson) bowled at Coe College.”

The 2025-2026 Kee girls basketball season has been looked to with great anticipation since the Lady Hawk team with just one senior on its roster and no seniors in its starting line-up took its efforts last winter to the brink of every team’s ultimate destination. Having its 2024-2025 campaign ended in the Class 1A regional finals - just one win away from its first State Tournament berth in seven years, the hardcourt Hawks will be returning six varsity letterwinners from that high-achieving squad, including all five of its starters in an overall larger team this season of 14 players in the freshman through senior classes.

The Waukon girls wrestling team opened its 2025-2026 season on a rather large stage against some rather large schools, competing in the Decorah Tournament that featured 16 teams and nearly 190 wrestlers Saturday, November 22. The Indians had 17 young ladies competing in the season-opening event and had 10 of them earn top-six placewinnings, including one runner-up result and a pair of third-place finishes, to help fuel the mat Tribe to a fourth-place team finish with 157 points, just one point behind third-place Ottumwa, which had 19 wrestlers competing. Cedar Falls ended up winning the tournament with a whopping 537 team points but had the advantage of 40 wrestlers competing in the event, more than twice as many as any other squad.

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The Waukon girls wrestling program will return an abundance of familiarity for the 2025-2026 season, as a dozen varsity veterans return to the mat for this winter’s campaign from last season’s squad. The newest face around the wrestling room for the mat Tribe this season will sit atop the coaching totem pole, as Kevin Johnson will assume the role of head coach for the Lady Indian program this winter, taking over that role previously held by Dani Bucknell for the last several seasons.

The Lady Indians are scheduled to get their 2025-2026 campaign underway this Saturday, November 22 at the Decorah Tournament. They will then return to the mat Tuesday, December 2 for a home quadrangular against MFL/MarMac, Postville and Tripoli before taking part in the large, two-day Dan Gable Donnybrook Tournament held at Xtream Arena in Coralville Thursday and Friday, December 4 and 5.

In a change for this season made by the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, the 2025-2026 high school girls bowling campaign got off to an earlier start than in years past, including for the Waukon girls squad with its first match early last week. However, in not much of a change from recent success levels, the Lady Indians got that earlier start to the season off on a positive note, pulling out a 2013-2004 victory at Sumner-Fredericksburg Tuesday, November 11.

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by Jennifer Bissell

Baseball has always been in John Papp’s blood. A native of the Milwaukee, WI area, Papp played collegiate baseball before earning his MBA. Since moving to the Waukon area with his wife, the former Elizabeth Dehli of the Harpers Ferry area, Papp has been involved in youth athletics with his boys.

That gave him the idea of the unique way he could give back to the community and still be involved in the sport he loves.

Papp recently opened Gap To Gap, an indoor training facility for baseball, softball and golf athletes to improve their game. Located at 219 Highway 9, just south of Waukon, the facility offers a large space for local athletes to get their practice swings in, as well as for teams to hold practices at any time of the year.

Having broken a five-year drought in appearances as a team at the Iowa High School State Cross Country Championships last season with a 12th-place finish at the Class 2A State Meet, the Waukon girls cross country team took another giant leap forward at this fall’s season grand finale, perhaps surpassing even their own expectations when they brought home this year’s State Runner-Up trophy. Being ranked seventh among this season’s Class 2A distance elite heading into the Friday, October 31 Class 2A State Meet held at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge, the Lady Indians continued their season trend of finishing no lower than third at any of their meets and took full advantage of an opportunity to showcase their entire team effort that has fueled that trend, even at the highest level of competition.

The end to one of the most consistent and successful individual careers in the recent history of Kee boys cross country came to a close this past weekend where every Iowa high school cross country athlete strives to be, as Hawk senior Justin Wagner brought Kee’s 2025 season and his high school cross country career to completion competing in his fourth consecutive Class 1A State Meet, held Saturday, November 1 at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge.

Competing for the fourth consecutive season among Class 1A’s distance-running elite, Wagner finished just beyond the top-20 individuals in that season grand finale, repeating his 21st-place finish that he had also achieved last season. This year’s near-miss of that top-20 in that Class 1A field of 152 runners came in a time of 17:00.2, the Hawk senior’s best time of this season and just a handful of seconds beyond his career-best time he achieved at last season’s State Meet.

The Waukon football team had its 2025 season brought to a close in the second round of the Class 2A State Play-Offs in a Halloween Night match-up at fifth-rated Alburnett Friday, October 31. The trick was trying to stop Class 2A’s leading rusher, Pirate junior Laken Caves, and that certainly ended up being no treat as the Pirate speedster racked up 267 yards and four touchdowns on the ground in leading his squad to a 34-16 win over the Indians for an end to their fall grid campaign.