Last week, the student-athletes for gymnastics, basketball, hockey, wrestling and dance commenced their practices with light workouts and conditioning. This week, the Citizen-Tribune visited the teams’ practices to get a sense of how the teams are progressing so far this year.

 

Things have been turned up a notch.

 

Boys Basketball Coach Josh Ihrke was busy organizing one-on-one drills for his players — pushing them hard to be ready for the first game of the year. That game, Dec. 6  is an away game against Big Lake that will help Ihrke and his band of coaches gauge where his starters are with their conditioning and preparation. 

 

On the girls side, Dan Baird has been pushing his girls to convert simple plays to open other players for clean shots and penetration.  He has a young team with only two seniors but he hopes to meld his players to be ready for their first game Nov. 27 at home against Willmar.

 

Down the hall of the school, Kayla Kalinowski has her young gymnasts prepping in the gymnastics room for Kalinowski’s first year at the helm. The gymnasts she inherited are young and she hopes to have them ready to go by Dec. 8, when Becker will host their annual invitational at noon.

 

In the wrestling room, Matt Aho and his talented assistants have been developing his athletes for their first match Nov. 30 at home against St. Agnes. Aho has a good mix of experience and raw talent and hopes his team competes well in the Granite Ridge Conference regular season, sections and maybe state.

 

The boys and girls hockey teams are getting their legs under them and preparing to be competitive in the Mississippi 8 and Two Rivers standings. The boys begin the regular season Nov. 24 at Bagley High School while the girls already hit the ice Nov. 10 against Rochester John Marshall and Nov. 17 against North Shore Storm.

 

The Dazzlers dancers are under new tutelage as Nadia Fischer-Danzeisen takes over as head coach for the varsity squad. Last year’s head coach, Julie Baloun will be an assistant and the girls will be vying to compete well against some of the best teams in the area.

 

No schedule of meets  has been made public at this time.

 

Robotics — which is basically a year-long activity — has been hard at work under Alex Jurek’s leadership to continue their trend of success in the fields of engineering, programming, support, marketing, planning and problem-solving. No schedule of matches has been made public at this time.

 

The Citizen-Tribune’s winter sports special will appear in the Dec. 1 issue.

 

Come out and support your local high school athletes this season!