Sports

The 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship Tournament has played its way to a final champion, as the University of Connecticut (UConn) topped Purdue University in the Monday, April 8 National Championship game, 75-60, to repeat as the NCAA Men’s Basketball Champion. The sorting out of that 68-team national tournament to this season’s National Championship winner has also resulted in the emergence of the winning entry for The Standard’s Bracket Challenge contest.

The winner of this season’s Bracket Challenge is Verland Lenth of Waukon, as he overcame some average early rounds of picking and a tough third round with some strong final four choices. He was the lone entry this year to choose at least three of this year’s final four teams, selecting UConn, Purdue and Alabama (along with Houston) within his final four teams, and then having UConn defeat Purdue in the finals.

With a Monday, April 1 meet at Decorah and the Thursday, April 4 Postville Invitational this past week both being the latest weather victims in the Waukon boys track team’s first four outdoor meets of the season being canceled, the Indians made some late-week inquiries to finally be able to compete in their first outdoor meet of the season Friday, April 5 at the Dyersville Beckman Invitational. The track Tribe won a pair of events and finished second in four more in a meet where no team scores were kept but that included 10 other teams, many of which the Indians don’t often see during their regular season schedule.

The Indians were next scheduled to take part in the Decorah Invitational Monday, April 8 before competing in the New Hampton Invitational Thursday, April 11. Another week of double duty next week includes a return trip to Decorah Monday, April 15 and then hosting their own Indian Relays Friday, April 19.

Having its first two outdoor meets of the season canceled by weather and its latest meet postponed a day, the Waukon girls track team finally got to take to the track outside for the first time this season when they competed in the Decorah Invitational Friday, April 5. The Lady Indians recorded two each of event wins and runner-up finishes to help tally 77 team points and end up as the fourth-place team in the meet’s eight-team field.

After having its first two outdoor meets of the season canceled by weather and not having competed on the track since the Upper Iowa Conference Indoor Meet more than two weeks earlier, the Kee girls track team finally got its first taste of outdoor competition this season when the Lady Hawks competed at the Decorah Invitational Friday, April 5. The meet had originally been scheduled for Thursday, April 4 but the latest blast of early spring winter weather postponed the meet, with the Hawks tallying four top-three event finishes against a mixed field of local school sizes, tallying 42 team points to finish in sixth place among the eight-team field.

The Waukon girls golf team continues its recent trend of regrowing the program, as a squad that yielded just one golfer two seasons ago grew to four last spring, and now this season has doubled to eight young ladies reporting for early-season preparation. This season’s roster of eight golfers includes the return of all four of last season’s players that also includes the one golfer who made up the entire team during the 2022 season, with none of this season’s players yet a senior.

“Doubling the team size from last year was a nice surprise,” Waukon girls golf coach Kathy McMillan shared. “Half the team returns as letterwinners that have playing experience. I will have six varsity players and there will be allowance for scoring, as a team score is made up of four out of six scores.”

The Waukon boys golf team will bring back half a dozen players with varsity letterwinning experience from a squad that turned in a winning record of 6-4 in dual meet competition last season. Those six varsity veterans include representation from each eligible grade level, including a trio of seniors, one junior and a pair of sophomores.

“I am looking for consistency in their scores this year,” Waukon boys golf coach Tharin Benson said of his returning varsity leaders. “I am looking for leadership at practice, and a willingness to dedicate time to short-game fundamentals. Also, course management decisions should be improved.”

The 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship Tournament is down to its final four teams, and half of them seem to have come as a surprise to this year’s entries in The Standard’s Bracket Challenge contest. None of this year’s entries has all four of those remaining teams listed among its winners at this point in the tournament, and just one entry has three of those four teams selected while 40 entries have two of the final four teams.

The Waukon boys basketball team played its way to a season record of 7-15 during this past winter’s campaign, including a 4-6 mark in Northeast Iowa Conference (NEIC) play that placed the bucket Tribe in fourth place in the final NEIC standings. The season started with a pair of those wins over the two NEIC teams the Indians finished in front of in those final standings, with second wins over those same New Hampton and Crestwood teams making up part of a three-game winning streak in mid-January that would prove to be Waukon’s final wins of the regular season.

The remainder of this season’s regular season schedule wrapped up with an eight-game non-winning streak before a split of two Class 2A District Tournament contests brought this winter’s campaign to a close in a deja vu heart-breaking loss at North Fayette Valley for a second consecutive season.

The Waukon girls and boys bowling teams rolled their way to end results on opposite ends of the win-loss spectrum during their 2023-2024 campaigns. The Lady Indians bowled their way to a 7-3 season record, while the Waukon boys played their way to a 3-7 season result.

The Waukon girls’ regular season schedule started and ended with alternating wins and losses, starting with one of each before rattling off four consecutive wins and then wrapping up that schedule alternating two each of wins and losses. This season’s three losses for the Lady Indians each came by just 15 pins or less, with just a margin of 32 pins preventing the Waukon girls from an undefeated dual match schedule.

The 2023-2024 Kee boys basketball season was undeniably the best in program history, as this winter’s Hawks flew higher and farther than ever seen before. The end result was a best-ever 22-3 season record that took the Kee boys basketball program to the brink of its first-ever State Tournament berth, with a number of other record-breaking and historic achievements taking place along the way (see shaded box accompanying this article on this same page), including being ranked for the first time in program history, as they climbed as high as Class 1A’s eighth-ranked squad and stayed within Class 1A’s top-10 for the remainder of the season.