The Prescott Cardinal football team will open its season on the road against the Northwestern Tigers, the WIAA Division 5 runner up last year. Head Coach Jordan Hansen and his charges emerged from my last week’s scrimmage in Osceola 100% healthy. “Along with big offensive and defensive lines, we have a lot of team speed this fall and I was really happy with how the kids performed last week,” said Hansen.  

The 2026 Cardinal cross country season begins this week with 35 athletes expected to compete this season. Seven seniors with Quinn Justen, Andrew Henrich, Rowan Bauman and Maverick Drew on the boys side, and Kyra Dix, Emma Schmitz and Emma Bohlman for the girls will be returning for their final season with the Cardinals. Head Coach Tim Phillips also welcomes eight freshmen, including Mari Most and Jonah Budworth who are both expected to contribute this season. After finishing third in the MBC last year, the boys and girls are hoping to finish in the top half of the Middle Border Conference. Sophomore Dawson Langer, a first-team all-conference selection last year, is the top returning runner for the boys. Senior harrier Kyra Dix, all-conference selection and state qualifier in 2025, is poised to have a big year for Prescott. The talented Dix finished seventh at the WIAA State Meet last season. The Cardinals open the meet schedule at home Thursday, Aug. 27 in a nine-team invitational that will include Bloomer, St. Croix Central and Totino-Grace from Minnesota. The girls race is slated to begin at 5:30 p.m. with the boys starting at 6:15 p.m. 

Prescott Head Volleyball Coach Geoffrey Sndyer and the Cardinal volleyball team hopes to build on experience from a season ago as the Cardinals return the bulk of their roster from 2025. Returnees include seniors Karlee Wall, Delaney Nelson and Grace Ptacek; junior Makayla Johnson; and sophomores Ella Pechacek and Emilyn Ennenga. Prescott opens the season on Aug. 25 at a multi-team event in Osceola, where they will square off against River Falls, Grantsburg and Turtle Lake. All three teams were Regional Champions last season in their respective divisions and will provide an early season test for the Cardinals. 

The Prescott Pirates wrapped up their 2026 season with an overall record of 12-11 and 9-5 in league play. Barrett Temmers led the team with a .419 batting average and paced the team hits, runs scored, and extra base hits. Brady Block led the team in runs batted and ended the season with an average of .360. On the mound it was Dylan Gausman who led the team in wins and strikeouts while Phil Seifert led the team with a sparkling ERA of 1.13.  

Undoubtedly, Major League Baseball fans know the name Shohei Ohtani. The Los Angeles Dodgers superstar, four-time Most Valuable Player and Japanese national hero has become one of the most remarkable figures in modern baseball. But before Ohtani became a Major League phenomenon, he was an 18-year-old playing in Japan’s National High School Baseball Tournament. During the 2012 tournament, Ohtani turned the heads of scouts around the world when he reportedly threw a 99-mph fastball. And, as they say, the rest is history. But Koshien is anything but an ordinary high school baseball tournament. The single-elimination tournament begins in July with more than 4,000 high school teams from across Japan competing for a chance to reach the national stage. When the dust settles, just 49 teams qualify—one from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures, roughly the equivalent of U.S. states. Two of Japan’s largest prefectures are so heavily populated that they each send two teams. Think about that for a moment. More than 4,000 teams begin the journey, and only 49 get to call themselves Koshien qualifiers. The two-week national tournament is a spectacle unlike anything we see in American high school baseball. More than 600,000 fans attend throughout the tournament, with roughly 50,000 packing the stadium for the championship game. And get this: an estimated six million more watche from home. That’s right. Six million people watching a high school baseball game. And then there is one of the most fascinating Koshien traditions. At the conclusion of the championship game, the losing team gets to collect dirt from the field. Among the tears and disappointment, players scoop up handfuls of the dirt and take it home, a physical reminder of how close they came to winning. Much of that dirt can find its way onto the home field of the national runner up, serving as a reminder and motivation for the next group of players who dream of making it to Koshien. For the winner, there is a different celebration. The school song fills the stadium as the players take their victory lap, surrounded by thousands of cheering fans. No infield dirt for them. All of this in front of 50,000 fans? Not a bad little high school baseball tournament. For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend the Netflix documentary Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams. It provides a fascinating look at a tournament that is about far more than just high school baseball; it is a cultural phenomenon.

From the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: The DNR announced that bonus antlerless harvest authorizations for the 2026 gun deer season will be available for purchase online through the Go Wild license portal and at license sales locations starting at 10 a.m. Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. All users entering the site between 9:45 a.m. and 10 a.m. will be randomly assigned a number and staged in a virtual queue. Users will be arranged randomly regardless of the actual time they enter the system. There is no advantage for customers who enter the site before 9:45 a.m. Users who log on after 10 a.m. will be added to the end of the existing queue in the order of arrival. To complete their purchase, hunters will need to know the deer management zone and unit in which they intend to hunt, determine whether they will hunt on public or private land and have a deer hunting license approval. Due to realignment of the Northern and Central Forest Zones, there were changes made to some deer management unit borders in 2025. The DNR encourages hunters to consult the Deer Season Structure And Management Zone maps before buying their licenses.

Headshaker of the Week: Fans of all ages love the home run. It's herculean, colossal, Ruthian, meteoric, mammoth, towering, thunderous, majestic — pick your favorite adjective. When the ball leaves the yard, the crowd explodes. People jump to their feet. Kids point. Adults smile. Everybody loves a four-bagger. So by all means, hit the home run. Enjoy it. Let the fans celebrate. But once you've hit it, I have a radical suggestion: run the bases. That's it. Apparently, however, that's asking too much these days. Instead, we get airplanes, side-stepping, pointing, screaming toward the opposing dugout, chest-thumping and enough choreography to make you wonder if the player is trying out for a dance team instead of rounding third base. What happened to simply hitting the ball and running? Apparently, we need to rethink the entire concept. At this point, I'm surprised somebody hasn't hired a choreographer. It's baseball, folks. Not a Broadway performance. Ted Williams didn't need a choreographed routine. He hit the ball, put his head down and ran. Imagine that. The greats like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Harmon Killebrew weren't exactly known for turning the trip around the bases into a traveling circus. They hit home runs. They ran. The fans celebrated. Everybody went back to playing baseball. What a quaint concept. Today, we've apparently decided that the home run isn't complete until the hitter has personally informed everyone in the stands that he hit the ball really, really hard. And this isn't just a professional baseball problem. Little League? Yep. High school? Yep. College? Yep. Professional baseball? Absolutely. It's everywhere. Apparently, the entire sport received the same memo: "When you hit a home run, whatever you do, don't just run." Nope. You must celebrate. You must pose. You must gesture. You must make sure the opposing team understands exactly how magnificent you are. Then people wonder why tempers flare. Nobody should intentionally throw at a hitter. But baseball players have always understood the unwritten language of the game. If you spend half a minute making a spectacle of yourself, don't be stunned when your next plate appearance comes with a little extra attitude. Hit the ball 450 feet. Enjoy it. Let the crowd go crazy. Then put your head down and run. You know, like a baseball player. Today watching players round the bases after hitting a home run today? It’s a headshaker.