Head Coach Chad Salay and the Prescott Cardinal girls’ golf team began practice this week. The Cardinals have won four consecutive Middle Border Conference championships and are once again the favorites this season. The four-time state champion Cardinals have also won five consecutive WIAA Sectional Championships. 

A reminder to Prescott Cardinal football fans: Saturday’s multiple team scrimmage at Osceola begins at 11:30 a.m. 

It has been reported that Prescott alumnus and University of Wisconsin-Stout graduate Haylee Yeager will be the new girls basketball coach at Ellsworth High School. A 2019 Prescott alumnus, Yeager scored well over 1,000 points in her prep career and was a four-year letterwinner for the Stout Blue Devils.  

From the Department of Natural Resources: The DNR announced that bonus antlerless harvest authorizations, formerly known as tags, for the 2024 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. 12, 2024. Bonus authorizations are sold at a rate of one per person per day until sold out or until the 2024 deer hunting season ends. Bonus authorizations are $12 each for Wisconsin residents, $20 each for non-residents and $5 each for youth ages 11 and under. An online queuing system will be used to manage volume in Go Wild. 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.

Fargo-Moorhead infielder Peter Brookshaw clubbed his eighth home run last Friday in a 12-5 victory over Sioux Falls. The Redhawks remain in second place in the West Division of the American Association, two games behind the Canaries of Sioux Falls. 

From the WIAA…High school softball coaches will be able to use electronic devices in the dugout for one-way communication to the catcher while the team is on defense beginning in 2025. This change was the highlight of the NFHS Softball Rules Committee’s two recommendations, which were forwarded as a result of the committee’s annual rules meeting held June 9-11 at The Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis. The NFHS Board of Directors approved the rules change and will take effect next year.

Freshman middle blocker Reese Ptacek and the Kansas Jayhawk volleyball team officially began practice this week. Kansas will enter the upcoming season as the conference favorite, having secured the top spot in the 2024 Big 12 Preseason Coaches' Poll, the league announced Wednesday. It marks the first time the Jayhawks have been designated in the top spot in the Big 12 Preseason Coaches' Poll. The Jayhawks finished 2023 with a conference record of 14-4 and ended the season with an overall mark of 24-6. Kansas advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, where they fell in a five-set match to Penn State. Ptacek is a 2023 graduate of Prescott High School. 

By now most of us who follow the news are aware that Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz coached football at Mankato West High School, joining the team’s coaching staff in 1997 as its defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. Mankato West started the 1999 season 2-4 under the-head coach Rick Sutton before winning eight straight games and later defeated Cambridge-Isanti High School in the Class 4A state championship. Walz coached until 2002 — before the school’s second state championship — and remained a teacher at Mankato West until he ran for Congress in 2006. Several former presidents and vice presidents played or coached football before their political careers. Dwight Eisenhower was the halfback for the Army football team before suffering a career-ending injury during the 1912 season, and later coached at Peacock Military Academy and St. Louis College. Gerald Ford, whose No. 48 is retired by the University of Michigan, won national championships as the university’s football team center in 1932 and 1933. Ronald Reagan played for Eureka College in the 1930s. John F. Kennedy played for Harvard University’s junior varsity team, while Joe Biden and Richard Nixon each played for their high school teams in Delaware and California, respectively.

Headshaker of the week: Undoubtedly, analytics have changed sports. From baseball to basketball, football to softball, crunching the numbers has become a science. Seemingly every professional organization relies on such data when it comes to drafts, game day preparation, and preparation. And to the annoyance of some, handfuls of fans today like to share their perceived sports analytic acumen with those around them. Drinking morning coffee at the local diner, eating a hot dog in the stands, or having a beer at the bar have become environments for self-identified football pundits to share their knowledge with those around them. Whether it be talking about “yards after contact for Justin Jefferson” or “Jordan Love’s third down completion percentage,” many gridiron fans today will espouse such stats in an attempt to impress like a peacock sporting its tail feathers. And today, the statistical choices are seemingly endless: Wins in games below 32 degrees. Time of possession against division opponents. Point differential against non-divisional opponents. Sack yardage. Yards per completion on first down. And the list goes on and on. Gone are the good old days where Packer fans simply talked about Jim Taylor’s yards per carry or Viking fans cheered each time Paul Krause intercepted a pass. For many of our generation, the statistics on the back of a Bart Starr’s football card was enough. Not today. It’s not enough. And it’s a headshaker.