Sunday is catch up and gearing up day! Gearing up for a BIG week!
The Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper's sports department photo gallery from the fall season is being updated. You can find that by clicking here: https://www.smugmug.com/app/organize/BBE-Fall-Sports-2025.
To see the general, non-sports events folder for 2025, you can find that here: https://bonanzavalley.smugmug.com/2025-B-B-EBonanza-Valley-area-events.
Here's a video from the most recent Fellowship of Christian Students gathering, which was on Friday morning:
And hats off to Grace Lutheran Church of Belgrade for hosting this each Friday morning.
On Sunday, we had quite strong sunshine, moderate winds out of the south plus a high of about 63 degrees in Brooten. It was a marvelous day for outdoor work.
Here's a video from the middle of game 3 against Park Christian last Friday:
The Jaguars had a rough patch in the beginning of the video, but after the Falcons cut a deficit down to 17-11, the Jaguars scored two straight. Teagan Dingmann had a nice attack on the right side.
About Hillcrest Lutheran Academy's volleyball team...
I'll probably move this small scouting report to a new blog post later tonight.
Senior Ella Knutson (5'10" MH/OH) had a career-high 20 kills against Underwood in the playoff opener last Wednesday. She also racked up 12 ace serves and 2 blocks. Their setters, Stella Moline and Brooke Swedberg, had 24 and 16 assists, respectively, running the 6-2 offense. Moline was perfect on 16 serve attempts.
Sophomore Elsa Retzlaff (5'10" OH) had 21 digs, and libero Chloe Walkup (5'6" senior) had 13 ace serves with errorless serving. The Comets totaled 81 digs, 48 kills, 10 blocks and 43 set assists.
ON MONDAY...
The Brooten city council meets in regular session on Monday night, October 27 at 7 p.m. The meeting agenda can be found at the Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper's editor's blog: https://shorturl.at/Parav.
I am in a high-pressure race to get this week's newspaper ready for the printing press. I have to shorten up the hours I can spend on it to accommodate two major tasks: (1.) get ample sleep tonight and Tuesday night; and (2.) make the trip on Tuesday to Fergus Falls. The paper may suffer! But I can't help it. On Wednesday night, I have a trip to Rochester Mayo looming. That is the big one, and it's right ahead of a Fargo trip! Yikes!!
I'll write a little more on this in my newspaper column this week, but I want to give a huge shout-out to Principal Trent Johnson for the concern and effort he is putting into this year's Veterans Day program at the elementary school. This program, led by the Brooten American Legion and Legion Auxiliary, is on Tuesday, November 11 at 9:30 a.m. in the elementary gymnasium. In recent conversations about Veterans Day, Johnson talked about the importance of Veterans Day and the importance that children learn about this event, its history and about properly honoring our veterans.
While I'm giving shout outs, here's a shout out for B-B-E Class of 2024 graduate Brooklyn Fischer, who is a standout volleyball player for the St. Cloud Technical and Community College Cyclones. She is one of eight sophomores on the team. On Saturday, SCTCC hosted Western Technical College in a conference match and won in 4 sets. During that match, Fischer broke her college's career kills record. In a 2-1 weekend where the Cyclones beat Rochester Community in 5 sets and lost to Ridgewater College in 5 sets, Fischer had 45 kills, 102 digs and 12 ace serves. Those stats led those categories for her team. The Cyclones are 16-13 overall and 10-6 in the Minnesota College Athletic Conference South Division.
