Metro Sports Report

Xavier moves up, Kennedy moves into poll

Xavier moved up, Washington, Prairie and Marion slipped down, and Kennedy sneaked into this week's Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union girls basketball polls.

Xavier (12-5) moved up four spots to No. 5 in the Class 4A poll after whipping Waterloo West, 53-30, knocking the Wahawks out of the rankings.

The Saints were knocked off by No. 1 Iowa City West, 52-37, Thursday night at Iowa City.

Three new members of 100 Win Club

There's a sign on the wall in the Kennedy wrestling room that lists all the members of the "100 Win Club" in school history, but it's time to add a few names.

Seniors Luke Kremer, Shane Williams and Ryan Rodriguez have joined the exclusive fraternity that now includes 10 men. Kremer cracked the century mark last season, while Williams and Rodriguez made it this season.

"It's a pretty cool thing to do," Rodriguez said Tuesday before practice. "I've been wrestling my whole life, so it's something you can say you achieved."

Kremer has climbed to fourth on the list with a career mark of 129-25. Williams is tied for seventh with a four-year record of 110-45 and Rodriguez is ninth at 104-56.

Class 4A divisions not how they were sold

Last week the Iowa High School Athletic Association released football district assignments for the next two years for classes 3A through Eight-Player. The districts are shifted every two years based on school enrollments. This year was a landmark year for the announcement of the district assignments for various reasons, the biggest being that Class 4A was going to be getting into the act.

It was highly publicized over the summer that the IHSAA was seriously considering placing all the 4A schools in the state into districts. That would have spelled the end of conference football.

The IHSAA had several viable reasons to look at 4A district football, the end of the somewhat complicated point system, and above all, the simplification of scheduling in western Iowa were chief among them.

Giant-killing Cougars strike down Prairie

If they keep this up, they’ll have to stop calling them upsets.

For the third time this month, unranked Kennedy toppled a ranked opponent, beating No. 8 Prairie, 58-52, Tuesday night on their home court.

The Cougars upset No. 6 Ames on Saturday night and stunned then-No. 9 Washington on January 6. They have won four straight and five of seven contests in January to raise their record to 8-6 overall, 6-5 in the Mississippi Valley Conference, setting up the possibility of an interesting finish in the Mississippi Division race.

It was only a matter of time before his young team would snare some big wins, said Kennedy Coach Dennis Roloff, whose Cougars were 3-4 at the end of December after letting some close contests slip away.