Sports

In what was anticipated to be a thunder vs. lightning match-up, with the Waukon football team’s rumbling offense and defense facing the flashing speed of Dubuque Wahlert, the football Indians roared to a 28-6 dimming of those host Golden Eagles in a Friday, September 30 Class 2A District 4 match-up played at Loras College in Dubuque. With both teams entering the game undefeated in Class 2A District 4 play, the 2-3 grid Tribe established and maintained a calm, quiet control of the game from beginning to end to stake sole claim of the District 4 lead and take control of its own destiny in securing yet another District 4 championship.

Waukon native and 2011 Waukon High School graduate Morgan McMillan, now the general manager and golf professional at Oneota Golf & Country Club in Decorah, won the Iowa PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) Women’s Professional Championship played Friday, September 16 at Des Moines Golf & Country Club, where she is pictured in the photo above. The tournament format was 18 holes.

McMillan turned in a winning total of 77 strokes, which is five strokes over par, to win the event by a single stroke over Janet Rooney, golf professional at the Des Moines Golf & Country Club that hosted this year’s tournament. The former Waukon High School and Wartburg College stand-out golfer parred nine holes and recorded two birdies during the event on holes 10 and 11, which were par 4 holes measuring 260 and 269 yards, respectively. Submitted photo.
 

Waukon High School celebrated its 2022 Homecoming this past week, and the Waukon football team provided plenty to celebrate in its Friday, September 23 game against Oelwein. With a Homecoming theme of “Hammer the Huskies,” the grid Tribe did just that with a 49-0 shut-out triumph that featured more than 400 yards of Indian offense while limiting the Oelwein visitors to just 76 yards, although that number was obviously impacted by the fact that the Huskies were missing some key personnel, both initially and as the game went on.

In what proved to be a rollercoaster of a ballgame at home against Riceville Friday, September 23, the Kee football team couldn’t quite get over the final climb after a fourth quarter descent that watched a 44-30 Hawk advantage erode away to a 50-44 Kee defeat. The game was a non-district battle that came about after the Hawks’ fellow Eight-Player District 5 squad Central Elkader announced it would not be able to field a varsity team this season.

The Hawks were riding the momentum of consecutive wins over the past two weeks, and Riceville looked to be another addition to that streak coming into the game with nothing but losses on their 2022 schedule so far this season. However, it was the losses the Hawks have recently suffered in their player personnel due to injury that head coach Chad Winters feels factored into his team not being able to come away with Friday’s victory.

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.

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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.