At Pequot Lakes today for the second and final day of the 38-team Jackhammer Invitational, the B-B-E Jaguars wrestling team finished in a tie for 10th place with Eagan with 97.5 team points. It was a remarkable finish while they had multiple open weights. Here's the weight divisions and who competed at each one for B-B-E: 107 Emmitt Skarre, 114 Noah Jensen, 121 Jude Thompson, 127 Noah DeRoo, 133 Jace Mueller, 139 Louie Tensen, 145 Dylan Koob, 160 Brett DeRoo, 172 Andrew Spanier, 215 Carson Gilbert. The Jaguars had open weights at 152, 189 and 285 pounds.
Brett DeRoo came out of the tournament as champion by winning the 160-pound bracket. In the championship, DeRoo won a thriller by a 2-1 ultra-tiebreaker decision against top-seeded Colbe Tappe of Staples-Motley. Fellow senior Carson Gilbert emerged as champion of the 215-pound bracket with a 5-0 record, with 4 of his 5 wins coming by fall. He won his semifinal match by a 17-1 tech fall (4:34).
Getting caught up on dance team news...
Last Saturday, December 14 at the Albany Invitational, the B-B-E/Paynesville Pirouettes dance team competed with three squads. In the JV Kick division, the Pirouettes took first place out of 7 teams, which is one of the best performances by a JV team that I can remember in the program's history.
The Pirouettes were at a dance competition today at Melrose Area high school. For an unprecedented third straight time, the JV Kick squad earned a first-place finish. They are really quite fabulous. The home competition that was supposed to be this past Thursday night will be rescheduled to January.
In other news...
The Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper website has a few Christmas-related videos/web articles posted: https://www.bonanzavalleyvoice.com.
Added on Sunday evening...I'm finally getting closer to being caught up on uploading winter sports photos to the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper's SmugMug galleries. Here's the direct link to find the winter sports albums: https://bonanzavalley.smugmug.com/B-B-E-Winter-Sports-24-25.
Here's a video from the last part of the Brooten Community Church's Sunday School Christmas program:
Speaking of church news...the directory listing in the December 19 issue had an error for Crow River Lutheran. Their Christmas Eve worship is at 3 p.m. and not 5 p.m. as was posted on page 3 of the newspaper.
Saturday brought me an afternoon of basketball games with the Class of 2031 and Class of 2032 girls' basketball teams in action in their first Highway 55 league games. The two squads played at Cold Spring at Rocori high school.
I've got a small surplus of girls' basketball video to post across the next week.
Here's a video from early in the 2nd half of the Holdingford game:
In College Basketball news...
B-B-E Class of 2024 graduate Brooklyn Fischer played 39 out of 40 minutes on Saturday, December 14 while pouring in 27 points for her St. Cloud Technical and Community College Cyclones against visiting Central Lakes College-Brainerd. The Cyclones lost, however, by a 57-52 score to fall to 4-6 overall heading into their Christmas break.
