Head Football Coach Jordan Hansen and his players will travel to Osceola this Friday to participate in a four-team controlled scrimmage. The Cardinals will also line up against the Grantsburg Pirates and River Falls Wildcats. The action begins at 10 a.m. and is open to the public. 

The Prescott High School volleyball and cross country teams begin practice this Monday. The Prescott girls golf team opens their competitive season on Monday at the City Lake of Lakes Invitational in Amery. The tournament begins an active week for Head Coach Chad Salay’s charges who will also compete in the New Richmond and Ellsworth Invitationals next Wednesday and Thursday. 

The Prescott Pirates opened the WBA playoffs last Saturday with a convincing 10-0 victory over Hayward on Saturday. Pitcher Dylan Gausman went the distance in the shutout victory. However, in the regional championship the Pirate bats fell silent as they fell to the Tilden Tigers by a score of 7-0. 

The University of Kansas volleyball season opens on Aug. 28 and Prescott fans will be given multiple opportunities to watch 2025 Honorable Mention All American and Prescott Alumnus Reese Ptacek on national television this season. ESPN and FOX have released their national television schedule for the 2026 volleyball season with the Kansas Jayhawks hosting two nationally televised games in Allen Fieldhouse. Overall, the Jayhawks will play five total matches on national television. The matches include four opponents who were ranked in the final 2025 American Volleyball Coaches Association National Rankings. Kansas ended its 2025 season with a final AVCA ranking of No. 14 after spending the entirety of the season in the Top 25 for the third consecutive year. The Jayhawks will open the season with a pair of back-to-back nationally televised games at 5:30 p.m. (CT) Friday, Aug. 28 in Pittsburgh on ESPN2, followed by Stanford on Sunday, Aug. 30 at 1:30 p.m. CT on ESPN. Kansas will then host Arizona State in Allen Fieldhouse at noon Sunday, Oct. 18 followed by a trip down south to take on Baylor at noon Sunday, Oct. 25 with both matches being featured on ESPN. The Jayhawks will return to Allen Fieldhouse for a Friday evening showdown with Kansas State in the Dillons Sunflower Showdown at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 on FS1.

From The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: Recently the DNR released both the hunting regulations (fall 2026-spring 2027) and the 2026 fall forecast series. Together, these resources contain most of the information that hunters will need to participate in hunting game species. The fall forecasts also include hunting and trapping outlooks for a variety of popular game species. New this year, the DNR published an online version of the hunting regulations, including a drop-down filter that can help people navigate to the info they need faster. The online version is mirrored after the print regulations, so hunters familiar with the print regulations should find the online regulations easy to transition to. The print version will also be available at DNR Service Centers in the coming weeks.

Headshaker of the week. When I was younger, I always thought clowns were funny. I associated them with the circus, county fairs, town parades and occasionally a kid’s birthday party where someone’s parents had made the questionable decision to hire a man with oversized shoes to entertain a bunch of 8-year-olds. Never once did I associate clowns with baseball. Until now. Enter Banana Ball. Because regular baseball, you see, apparently has a problem. It isn't fast enough. It isn't crazy enough. It isn't zany enough. And heaven forbid we should expect fans to sit in a seat and watch a baseball game without somebody doing a backflip. So now we have players hitting while standing on stilts, umpires doing the splits, players performing flips and somersaults, strange costumes, strange rules and enough gimmicks to make P.T. Barnum wonder if somebody has gone too far. Soon, prior to the start of the game, I am expecting both managers to be shot out of cannons to deliver their lineup cards to the home plate umpire. Look, I understand the objective. Put people in the stands. Make it entertaining. Give fans something they can't see at a traditional baseball game. Fair enough. But here's my strange take. Baseball is already entertaining. Crazy, I know. Give me a great diving catch. Give me a perfectly executed squeeze play. Give me a pitcher working out of a bases-loaded jam. Give me a game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth. Give me a walk-off home run. I'll take all of that without the stilts, the costumes, the juggling and the gymnastics routine. But apparently that isn't enough anymore. Now we have to entertain people who apparently have the attention span of a gnat. No bunting. Tuxedos. Kilts. Juggling. Flips. Splits. Stilts. What's next? A baseball game where every third inning is interrupted by a fan karaoke contest? Maybe the winner gets to pitch the bottom of the seventh. For those of us who grew up believing the drama of the game was the entertainment, this whole thing is a little difficult for me to swallow. Yes, I am old-fashioned. Yes, I am a purist. Baseball didn't need a clown act when I was growing up. And I don't think it needs one now. Banana Ball? Now, that's a headshaker.