Southeast Iowa- After a short break, it is time to get back to action with Quarter 2 of our Sports Year in Review sponsored by H&R Block and this trio of months saw multiple runs at state and a handful of state champions.
The race to the mecca of track and field for the state of Iowa, the Blue Oval, was heating up to start the month of April with the Mt. Pleasant’s girls’ 4×100 meter team of Kiyah Sanders, Alex Scott, Taylor Williamson, and Kynlee White hitting the Blue Standard mark at the Falcon Relays. We were also being introduced to future state track and field competitors, like Jackson Shacklett and Alaina Gourley of Danville, as they led their teams to a win on their early senior night meet over New London, who had their own speedsters in the boys’ 4×100 and 4×200 meter relay teams that were ready to make some noise. Winfield-Mt. Union’s Kohlby Newsom and Josie Nelson along with Kynlee Buffington were looking to put an exclamation mark on a career or start their career with a bang, respectively, with a display of experience and youth.
Trading the track for the courts, the Mt. Pleasant boys’ tennis team put together a solid month of tennis, winning their five meets of the season and going 6-1 in the month of April. In those six victories, Max Heater, Dane Cook, and Elijah Rynders each went undefeated, while the team of Sawyer Fulton and Lou Schimmelpfennig collected six wins in doubles play. The Mt. Pleasant girls’ team got their first win of the season against Burlington Notre Dame behind victories by Bethany Drury, Halie Crane and Zoey Carlsen, and a talented freshman in Lila Cook, who ascended to a spot on the varsity team and rounded up her first varsity win in their home opener.
Over on the pitch, the Mt. Pleasant boys’ team was gearing up to have one of their best seasons in over a decade with Dylan White, Brandon Veloz, a German exchange student in Samuel Schaapen, and a defense anchored by goalie Xachary LeBlanc picking up a 10-0 win over Danville for a season opening to set the tone for the season. All those players would finish All-Conference, including Abraham and Kohen Cass.
The Southeast Iowa Super Conference had their own mix of teams making a run at the state tournament as Central Lee started off the year on an 8-game winning streak, Mediapolis had proven to be a tough team, while Burlington Notre Dame found a slot at #4 in the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s top 10 for Class 2A as they rattled off eight straight victories to start off the month of April in large part due to Alessandro Markomichelakis, who helped Mediapolis best the Nikes the year before in the SEISC championship.
The Mt. Pleasant girls’ team saw history be made in early April as Charice Auwerda scored a hattrick in a 5-1 victory over Fairfield to break the career points record for the Panthers. She finished her illustrious career with 207 career points.
Out on the golf course, the Washington boys’ team was running away with the Southeast Conference title, while the Central Lee boys’ team was making their own case for a run at state. On the girls’ side, Wapello’s Emmalin Marshall and New London’s Emma Busby were nailing the green and warming up for an individual run.
Heading back to the oval, the Mt. Pleasant middle school girls’ team was busy setting records, as Avery Fedler, Lindsy Hart, Delaney Anderson, and Ruby Syfert won the distance medley crown and record at their home meet, while the 4×1200-meter relay 7th grade team of Kya Heaton, Natalie Osterhaus, Peyton Duplesis, and Hailey Schadt broke the relay record. Fedler also established school records in the 400 and 800-meter runs.
Up at the high school level, the Mt. Pleasant girls’ team were still looking to hurdle Washington and reclaim the conference crown, but the Demons got the first laugh when they won the Demon Relays by 30 points. Even the Fairfield boys’ team got off to a slow start, but Eli Zillman was still jumping for gold whether in the high jump or at this meet the long jump. WACO’s Hayden Shelman and Carlee Lunsford sprinted to golds and Jude Dykstra paced himself for a win in the 1600-meter.
At the Eastern Iowa Track and Field Festival, Lamar Ceant and Alexander Rees of Columbus grabbed the top two spots, respectively, in the 110-meter hurdles to put the area on notice.
Later at the Denny White Relays, the Panther girls’ team cruised to victory with the 4×100, 4×200, and Alex Scott in the 100-meter dash setting new meet records. Burlington’s Kylee Hill, who was looking to add more hardware in May, broke the discus meet record with a toss of 129 feet and 2 inches.
Some of these performances set a Blue Oval Standard and sent some of our best athletes to Des Moines for the 115th Drake Relays in late April, including Mt. Pleasant’s Avin Truong, who leapt a school record 23 feet and 8 inches in the long jump in the early part of the track season. Here’s some of the highlights.
Washington’s Greyson Hartman took the silver medal in the shot put with a heave of 58 feet and 11 inches, while Kylee Hill grabbed 4th in the girls’ shot put. Kohlby Newsom of Winfield-Mt. Union snatched 10th in the 800-meter run. The New London 4×100 meter boys’ team of Cale Westerbeck, Gavin Strawhacker, Brigham Porter, and London Franklin were just getting warmed up with a 25th place time of 43.48 seconds. Lastly, the Mt. Pleasant middle school team of Delaney Anderson, Lindsay Hart, Elodie Rawson, and Avery Fedler finished with the gold in the sprint medley relay with a time of 4 minutes and 12 seconds, eight seconds faster than 2nd place.
The month of May started off with an epic at East Lake as Bizzie Richtman stepped in for Eli Heaton, who made some phenomenal saves in the game, to save three more shots and execute a 1-0 shutout of Washington. The senior knew she had to step up, despite dealing with injury,
“I mean, I was really struggling with my hip, but I just knew that like my teammates were kind of counting on me and it’s really a team sport. It’s not like a personal sport. And I know that if I wasn’t going to go in, then I don’t know who else would and I just knew that I had to step up.”
Auwerda, Heaton, and Sonya Simon were named All-SEC in June.
Early May saw the conferences hold their challenges for the yearly banner and track and field commenced the activities with the Southeast Conference Meet. In a thrilling finish that saw Alex Scott win two individual golds and the 4×200 team of Ellie Freeman, Kynlee White, Kiyah Sanders, and Scott set a new SEC meet record, the Panthers girls’ team snatched their 11th title in the last 13 years on the last event of the night.
Through the season the Fairfield boys’ team found their stride and ran away with the title as Gabe Tejada dominated the 400 and 800-meter runs, while Zillman shared the high jump title with Ryan Giberson and won his own title in the long jump.
On the same night, the Mediapolis boys’ and girls’ teams won the SEISC-South Division, the Columbus’ boys’ team claimed their 3rd consecutive title, and the Pekin girls’ team made it back-to-back conference crowns.
Mediapolis’ Simon Wendel swept the long-distance events. The Van Buren County boys’ team had the sprint medley relay team and Lincoln Bainbridge take SEISC crowns. Landry Haberichter of West Burlington/Notre Dame was warming up for his state run with a first-place time of 10.76 seconds in the 100-meter dash.
WACO’s Dykstra claimed two conference titles on the North side while Kolton Small of Wapello won the shot put. Columbus’ Lamar Ceant was nearly unstoppable, winning a trio of gold medals.
On the girls’ side, Josie Nelson (100-meter hurdles) and Kynlee Buffington (long jump) won conference crowns for Winfield-Mt. Union, Bren Graber of WACO was the lone conference champ in the 400-meter hurdles. Lastly, in the South Division, Alaina Gourley of Danville won the 400 and 800-meter events and Mediapolis’ 4×100, 4×200, and 4×800 teams took the crown.
From the track to the fairways, the Central Lee boys’ team finished eight-strokes in front of Van Buren County to win the Conference banner as Mylan Lowenberg took home individual conference champion honors with a course-low score of 77. Konner Kinneberg of Winfield-Mt. Union finished in 3rd.
The boys’ SEC crown again went to Washington for their third-consecutive season. Merrick Lamm and Brody Engle for Mt. Pleasant were All-Conference golfers. Fairfield’s Archer Kreuter and Drew Myers also earned All-Conference honors and Washington’s Drew Conrad carded the best overall score of 254 for the SEC season.
On the girls’ side of the SEISC, Emmalin Marshall of Wapello, Emma Busby of New London, Sophia Jirak of Van Buren County, and WACO’s Morgan Meyer were named to the First-Team All-Conference list.
On the tennis courts, the team of Max Heater and Dane Cook knocked off the #1-seed in the SEC boys’ tournament to set up a matchup against their teammates Sawyer Fulton and Lou Schimmelpfennig for the conference title. Heater and Cook escaped with the gold. Fairfield’s Rumin Luo dropped only three games on his way to an individual title as he would later finish in 6th place at the state tournament.
On the pitch, a Xachary LeBlanc shutout of Burlington led to the Mt. Pleasant boys’ team winning their first conference crown since 2013 with Asa Rose netting one of the two goals in the game.
The boys’ SEISC championship showdown pinned two familiar foes against one another in Mediapolis and #6 Burlington Notre Dame. After Jayden Nanthan and Lance Ludens traded goals, it came down to penalty kicks, where John Paul Hill, in relief for Taylor Lundgren, made enough saves to clinch the Nikes’ first SEISC championship since 2022.
Mt. Pleasant and Mediapolis each ended up falling in the Substate championship game, while Burlington Notre Dame punched their ticket to the state tournament after blanketing Maquoketa 4-0. We’ll catch back up in June.
On the approach, southeast Iowa was ready to send some golfers to the state tournament. Namely, the Central Lee boys’ team as Carter Jones’ 94 proved to be the tiebreaker for the Hawks first trip to state since 2018. Washington’s Drew Conrad also qualified as an individual. Mylan Lowenberg would lead the team to an 8th place finish as he took 30th at state. Conrad finished with a 24th place card.
On the girls’ side, Busby and Marshall attended the state meet with the Tiger placing in 24th, while the Arrow notched 38th place, respectively.
Now, to end out the month of May, we head to the Blue Oval in Des Moines for the state track and field meet. Here’s some of the highlights.
London Franklin of New London had himself a phenomenal three days at the event as he grabbed the silver medal in the long jump with a leap of 21 feet and 11.25 inches, then joined Westerbeck, Strawhacker, and Porter for a state championship time of 42.5 seconds in the 4×100 meter relay. That same group would finish with the silver in the 4×200 meter relay.
Columbus’ Alexander Rees and Lamar Ceant combined for 24 of the team’s points as Ceant took 2nd place in the 110-meter hurdles. The pair would join Riley Kaalberg and Johnathan Miranda in the shuttle hurdle relay and race to a 2nd place time.
Placed right next to each other, Keokuk’s Ryan Bair and West Burlington/Notre Dame’s Landry Habericther ran personal best times in the 100-meter dash with Bair claiming the silver and the Falcon donning the bronze.
Winfield-Mt. Union’s Kohlby Newsom shot out of a cannon on the final lap of the 800-meter run to win the state championship with a time of 1 minute and 53 seconds.
Fairfield would watch Giberson and Zillman tie for 2nd place in the high jump, while the distance medley team of Dylan Adam, Ethan Bisgard, Ousman Saine, and Tejada grabbed the bronze.
Burlington’s Kylee Hill was a wrecking machine as she claimed her second state championship in as many years in the shot put and followed it up with a silver medal in the discus. On the boys’ side for the SEC, Greyson Hartman finished in 3rd in the discus with a throw of 169 feet and 8 inches.
Mt. Pleasant’s Alex Scott would take 6th in the 100-meter dash and join White, Taylor Williamson, and Sanders in the 4×100 to place in 6th. Ella Ensminger tossed the shot put 38 feet and 9 inches for 8th place.
Overall, three state champions and dozens of state qualifiers.
Also in May, Luke Hellige of Holy Trinity Catholic singed his Letter of Intent to play basketball at Cornell College. The Mt. Pleasant REC Youth Baseball league celebrated their 60th season and the Southeastern Community College baseball team earned an at-large bid to the NJCAA DII World Series tournament.
June would see the Notre Dame boys’ soccer season come to an end as they fell to Williamsburg 2-1 in the quarterfinal round.
Katie Ettinger, a Mt. Pleasant junior, won her 2nd consecutive State Championship at the Iowa Scholastic 3D Archery competition in her second year of competing and only the third year of its existence.
Mt. Pleasant’s Avery Fedler, who will be a freshman in the fall, made the trip west to Seattle for the Brooks PR Invitational on Sunday to race against the best in the nation and the Panther finished in 3rd place in the 800-meter junior division with a time of 2 minutes and 12 seconds.
The All-State team for singles trap was released and Mt. Pleasant’s Izaac Zihlman earned a spot on the Men’s Trap High-All-Around team. The All-State team is determined by the combination of the athlete’s league score and the Championship Event Score. Zihlman collected the bronze in the Men’s Varsity League as he finished with a score of 196.
It also belonged to baseball and softball as the pitching and hitting was on full display. Here’s some of the headlines as we gear up for postseason play in the next quarter. The Mt. Pleasant softball team, behind Paityn Ensminger and Chaley Cook’s hitting won multiple conference games in a season for the first time since 2020. Central Lee’s softball team wrapped up its third straight SEISC-South Division Title as Kenna Sandoval continued crushing the ball.
Washington’s softball club perched their way into top 15 for Class 3A, while Sydney Jarvis was clobbering the ball for Holy Trinity Catholic as they prepared for a run at state.
For baseball, Fairfield was sprinting towards another SEC title after a Dayson Workman walk-off blast against Mt. Pleasant, despite a three-RBI performance from J.C. Sitar.
New London was tossing no-hitters and winning some tight games, including a win over Burlington Notre Dame that snapped a six-game winning streak for the Nikes over the Tigers. They nearly knocked off Mediapolis, but the Bulldogs were receiving attention in the Class 2A rankings. Lance Ludens would tab his 200th career strikeout and take the Bulldogs to start of July with a 22-1 record on the season.
It’s now halftime of KILJ’s Sports Year in Review as we prepare for the State Baseball and Softball tournaments and get ready for fall sports! This is KILJ’s Sports Year in Review brought to you by H&R Block!
