Sports

It’s a game the Oconto Falls football players won’t soon forget.

A Thursday night in late November 1997 at Camp Randall Stadium, the WIAA Division 3 state title on the line.

Oconto Falls’ defense didn’t allow any second-half points as the Panthers broke a 14-all tie in the third quarter en route to a 28-14 victory over Slinger. It was Oconto Falls’ first and only state football title.

“Being a coach’s kid and going down to the state finals a few times, I guess playing football as a kid in Wisconsin that’s something you dream about,” star running back Nate Rogatzki said. “We always grew up as big Badgers fans, so that was pretty cool to be able to play on that field.”

The former players can’t believe it has been 20 years since the magical season.

For the second time in as many years, the Gillett High School football team will have a new varsity head coach.

Jesse Witcraft, who worked his way up from the junior high program to a varsity assistant coach last year, will take over for Steve Andrastek, who resigned after accepting a new job that would interfere with the team’s practice schedule.

“I think the transition for us will be fairly easy because a lot of the kids I had in the junior high program are familiar with the offensive style that I’m going to run,” Witcraft said.

The Tigers, who went winless in 2016 with an 0-9 record, are also making the transition into the eight-man football game, joining the MONLPC-8.

The Oconto Falls 10U softball team lost the Gillett Diamond Days championship game on a coin flip Sunday.

Nearly 2 inches of rain over 30 minutes Sunday at Orby Jones Sports Complex prevented the bracket play from being completed for the 10U and 12U softball divisions.

The coin flip went in favor of Seymour, as it walked away with the 10U title.

Seymour also picked up first place in the 12U division.

In the 14U competition, which wrapped up play Saturday night, Oconto Falls defeated Gillett/Suring, 12-8, for first place.

It was the second weekend of Diamond Days in Gillett, giving the softball teams a chance to play in front of larger crowds.

“It’s always great to have home-field advantage and it’s always nicer to have a bigger crowd,” Gillett Diamond Club President Dawn Nelson said.

The Gillett 10U softball team finished the tournament 0-3, as did the 12U team.

Six years ago Wisconsin was unable to field a six-person junior team in the National Trophy Rifle Matches at Camp Perry in Port Clinton, Ohio.

Now, Wisconsin is home to the national champion six-person junior team and two-person junior team, and placed two competitors on the Bill Deneke Trophy Team, an honor roll of the six best junior service rifle shooters in the nation.

Team Cheddar consisting of Josh Hanrahan, of Suamico, and Brad Schoenemann, of Lodi, and coach Kaleb Hall, of Oconto, took home first place in the Freedom Fire match. The duo narrowly defeated Illinois’ top team on “X” count (the bull’s-eye of the target). Team Cheddar is the first Wisconsin team to bring home the Freedom Fire trophy since it was introduced in 2009

Chute Pond Snowmobile Club will host a fundraiser for motor enthusiasts of all types from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 9 at the Bill Lazansky Community Center in Mountain.

Mountain Motor Madness will include food and beverages, music and raffles. Proceeds will go toward local snowmobile trail maintenance, Oconto River Kids and Vets 4 Vets of Northeast Wisconsin.

Any vehicle with wheels is welcome to be displayed at no charge. There is also no admission charge for spectators.

Food and beverages will be available for purchase. Jake Rock Entertainment will provide music. There also will be bucket raffles and all-meat, no fillers spin wheel raffles (with four meat winners per round).

Oconto River Kids is a nonprofit group of dedicated volunteers whose mission is to assist kids with life-threatening illnesses attain their outdoor dreams through hands-on adventures. Learn more at www.ocontoriverkids.com.

The seventh-annual Dogleg Open, a fundraiser for the Wisconsin chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, will be held Sept. 16 at Parkway Golf Club in Pound.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system. The MS Wisconsin chapter serves more than 11,000 residents diagnosed with MS and those who love and care for them. Over the past six years, the Dogleg Open has raised over $42,000 for MS research and patient support.

The cost per person is $60; $55 if paid in full by Sept 6. The registration includes 18 holes of golf with a cart, prizes and a dinner. A dinner-only option is available for non-golfers.

The tournament is a scramble format.

Hole sponsorships, donations and raffle items are also being accepted. For information or registration, call Dylan Guendert at 414-627-9177 or Parkway Golf Club at 920-897-3950.

Through the first three innings Saturday, Oconto Falls had 11 baserunners but just two hits in an American Legion Class A Regional elimination game against Clintonville in Bonduel.

Oconto Falls scored two runs, stranding six runners in scoring position, in those three frames en route to a 4-3 loss that ended its season three wins short of the state tournament.

“I told the guys, you let a team off the hook like that so many times, they’re going to burn you,” Oconto Falls head coach Alex Seidel said. “And we didn’t make the clutch hits today.”

Clintonville pitcher Logan Liesenfelder walked six batters and hit two in the opening three innings. But he also had five strikeouts to help him avoid serious trouble.

His erratic pitching led to Oconto Falls’ first two runs. Jacob Fosters drove in a run on a hit-by-pitch, and then Connor Peetz picked up the second RBI on a bases-loaded walk.

With Gillett’s move into the eight-man football game and the competitive imbalance around parts of northeastern Wisconsin, large conference realignment is set to take place for football only for teams in the Marinette & Oconto, Northern Lakes and Packerland conferences.

Gillett, which is transitioning this fall to the smaller game, will become part of the MONLPC-8, along with Wausaukee, which is also moving into the eight-man game this fall.

The two will join what used to be the Great-8 North Conference, with the likes of Lena/STAA, Menominee Indian, Gresham/Bowler, Sevastopol, NEW Lutheran, Gibraltar and Oneida Nation.

The bigger changes come for the schools still playing the 11-man game, where competition has been divided into small- and large-school conferences.

Suring will compete in the MONLPC-Small along with Crandon, Crivitz, Elcho/White Lake, Florence, Northern Elite (Niagara, Goodman, Pembine), Three Lakes/Phelps and Wabeno/Laona.

Mark Sparks had not even been at Gillett High School for a complete year before he was given the opportunity to become the school’s athletic director.

With Mike Kaczmarek stepping down in June, Sparks had already been shadowing him in the position for over a year.

“From what I’ve seen and what he’s shown me and what he’s explained to me, you can’t do this job well without being organized,” Sparks said. “Because all it takes is you miss one paper and now you don’t have an official for a JV game, so what do you do then?

“You forget to confirm with someone via email that they have to work an athletic event. Now you don’t have someone taking tickets, so now you’ve lost that revenue with the school or things like that. It’s really about organization and double-checking everything.”

It seems that I can’t travel our local Waupaca County roads at all lately without having to stop for a wild turkey or two. When I was hunting them this spring, they were everywhere, too — except within shotgun range to my ground blind.

Spring turkey hunters killed 43,341 birds, a slight decrease from last year’s harvest. That could be in part because there were fewer permits sold; 212,088 this year vs. 212,772 last year. The other reasons were a 27 percent decline in turkey production and heavy rains the second season, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The overall success rate was 20.4 percent, compared with last season’s 21.3 percent.