Hats off to the Prescott High School student section and other rooters who donned pink shirts in support of Osceola High School senior center Carson Hollman, whose mother died after a long battle with cancer last week. Well done. Cardinal Head Coach Nick Johnson has nothing but praise for Osceola Head Coach Tyler Olson. 

“He is a great coach and a great guy. I have a lot of respect for him,” said Johnson. 

Ninety-three kids. Wow. That is the number of Prescott High School students participating in track and field and is believed to be the largest combined team in Cardinal track and field history. There are 36 boys and a whooping 57 girls who will be competing this spring for head coaches Carl and Emily Calabrese. Like all other spring sports this year, the challenges posed by Mother Nature make preparing for 2023 more difficult than usual. Both squads will be opening the season at the UW-Stout Indoor Invitational in Menomonie on Tuesday, March 21. 

There is little time to relax for Head Boys Basketball Coach Nick Johnson, who also skippers the Cardinal softball team, who began practice this week. The Cardinals are poised to make another run at a conference title this spring and hope to make another run at a berth in the WIAA State Tournament in June.

Nominations for the Prescott Hall of Fame are due June 1. The Hall of Fame Banquet will be held at Prescott High School on Saturday, Sept. 29. Nominations forms can found at the Prescott School District website under the category of “community.” 

Practice for pitchers and catchers only begin for the Cardinal baseball team this week as the WIAA allows pitchers five days of throwing before the beginning of the regular season. Assistant coach Matzek will supervise the ninth-through-12th grade hurlers as they ready their arms for the fast-approaching season. Matzek is in his 27th season with the Cardinal baseball team. Practice for all players begins on Monday, March 20 with 50 athletes expected to hit the diamond this spring. 

Tickets are available for the Friday, March 24 Baseball/Softball Banquet at the Old Ptacek’s Event Center. The Wild, Vikings, Twins and Brewers have all donated raffle/silent auction items for the annual event. The featured speaker will be The Common Man Dan Cole, KFAN Radio Personality. Cost of the banquet is $25; for ticket information, call Brady Randolph at 651-560-6954 or send an email to cabbbco@gmail.com 

North Dakota State infielder Peter Brookshaw is now hitting .317 after an impressive four-game series against Texas State. The 2018 Prescott alumnus homered on Friday, and slammed two more on Saturday against the Bobcats, who qualified for the NCAA Tournament last year.  Brookshaw is tied for the team lead in doubles with six and also shares the team lead in home runs with five. The Bison’s brutal schedule continues this week with three games against the Texas Longhorns in Austin.  

Come on WIAA. The Albany High School (enrollment 87) girls basketball team advanced to the WIAA State Tournament for the first time in school history. Albany Comets opponent: The #1 seed private school Chippewa Falls McDonnell. Located in Chippewa Falls, a city of 15,000 people, McDonnell pummeled the small rural public school with a population just over 1,000 by a score of 59-20. And then on the boys side, the #1 seed in the boys bracket, McDonnell defeated Solon Springs (high school enrollment 87) 58-56 in overtime to advance to the state tournament. It would have been tiny public school Solon Springs, with a population of 667, first-ever trip to Madison, but the private school Chippewa Falls McDonnell will advance to the Kohl Center. Like this commentary, it gets tiresome. It might be time to bring back the private school tournament because the private schools statistically are dominating the lower divisions of WIAA competition. Perhaps calling our friends at River City Stitch with a shirt order emblazoned with “Bring Back WISAA” would sell. Quite sure it would sell like hotcakes in Albany, Prairie Farm, Siren, and Solon Springs. 

Congratulations to Jordan Malmlov as he wrapped up his Prescott Cardinal basketball career with a school record 1,906 points. Malmlov was named 1st Team All Confernece and Co-Middle Border Conference Player of the Year, an award he shared with Osceola’s Brayden Bradway. Dallas Wallin was also named to the 1st Team and next year will enter his senior season with 1,183 points and 627 rebounds. Senior Brandon Stuart was named 2nd Team All Conference and senior Brady Block was named Honorable Mention. For the girls, Lila Posthuma was named 1st team All Conference. A junior, Posthuma will enter the final year of her prep career with 814 points and 520 rebounds. Senior Katrina Budworth was named to the second team and fellow senior Izzy Matzek was named Honorable Mention. Ninth grader Violet Otto was also named Honorable Mention for the Middle Border Conference Champion Cardinals. 

Headshaker of the week. It turned out to be quite a scheduling fiasco last week as both Osceola and Prescott were preparing for their Thursday sectional semi-final matchup. Osceola High School had been the schedule site for months with Somerset being the venue for the sectional championship. However, the sectional games are supposed to be on “neutral courts” and the WIAA would not allow Osceola to be the host school as they were playing. Somerset then offered to host, but along with an objection by West Salem, the WIAA said the team that won the sectional semi-final in the Somerset gym would have an advantage in the championship because they would have already played there. Unbelievable. The WIAA has known for weeks Osceola’s chances of advancing to the sectional semis was very good. Why on earth would the WIAA not have any kind of a contingency plan in place for such a situation? Leaving teams, coaches, schools, parents, fans, and school staff in the lurch regarding WIAA Sectional Semi-Final venues? It’s a headshaker.