Hawks Vie for ‘Lincoln League’ Title

EG OPENS SEASON AGAINST MELCHER-DALLAS


East Greene opens the 2010 football season tonight with a home tilt against Melcher-Dallas. After a trip to Twin Cedars (Bussey) in another non-district game next week, the Hawks return home to open District 7 action on Sept. 10 against new district foe Boyer Valley (Dunlap).

The newly aligned District 7 could easily be tabbed the “Lincoln League” as five of the eight high schools are located in communities on U.S. Highway 30, the original Lincoln Highway. Along with East Greene, the other schools on Highway 30 are Glidden-Ralston, Ar-We-Va, Boyer Valley (Dunlap) and Woodbine. Rounding out the “League” are Coon Rapids-Bayard, Charter Oak-Ute and Walnut.

Two of those other three schools are located within less than a dozen miles of U.S. 30—Coon Rapids south of the Lincoln in eastern Carroll County and Charter Oak west of Denison and north of Dunlap in Crawford County, heading along the diagonal that starts at Arcadia and heads down to Missouri Valley. Walnut is the “orphan” of the league. Located less than a mile south of Interstate 80 in the far northeast corner of Pottawattamie County, Walnut is about 40 miles due south of U.S. 30 from Vail.

Not only does D7 encompass five high schools located on the Lincoln, those five school districts among them have 10 towns located on the highway. From east to west, they are: Grand Junction, Ralston, Glidden, Arcadia, Westside, Vail, Arion, Dow City, Dunlap and Woodbine. Grand Junction, however, is the only town to lay claim to being both on both U.S. 30 and the historic Original Lincoln Highway. The original Lincoln spans a point east of Grand Junction—site of the Historic Bridges and Welcome Center—and continues for three miles through Grand Junction along Main Street and Highway 144/Eighth Street to the southwest edge of town, and then on to Jefferson and Scranton, running parallel to “New 30.”

EG vs. Melcher-Dallas

District alignment saw the shifting of Adair-Casey and CAM (Anita) to District 6 while Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira, a D7 member last year has moved up to Class A. Filling the gap of those three departures are Ar-We-Va, Charter Oak-Ute and Woodbine from District 1. Boyer Valley, which drops down from Class A, was assigned to D7 making it a full 8-team league.

With the shift of district assignments, the non-district match-ups were adjusted too. EG faced Ar-We-Va and Charter Oak-Ute last year but as they are now D7 foes, EG will face two teams from District 5: Melcher-Dallas and Twin Cedars (Bussey).

The Hawks return nine lettermen from a squad that finished fifth of six teams in D7 at 1-4 and 3-6 overall. Co-coaches Tim Bardole and Tony Beger will be looking to the six senior returning lettermen to lead the Hawks this year: Schyler Bardole, Nic Nicolaisen, Wes Onken, Aaron Lyons, Rob Ritchie and Brett Kersey. Also back is Zach Hiller, who lettered as a junior, and sophomore letterwinners Tory Beger and Reed Ostrander.

Bardole has started in the EG backfield since his freshman year and he has been named to all-district team each of the last three years. He rushed for 822 yards on 52 carries last year and scored 14 touchdowns. He was also the Hawks’ leading receiver with 24 catches for 338 yards. Nicolaisen ran the ball 23 times for 163 yards.

Coaches Bardole and Beger will look to either Tyler Cooklin or Tory Beger to handle the QB duties. They will have big shoes to fill as Tom Beger racked up 1,262 yards last season with a 78-174 completion rate. He threw 16 touchdown passes last year and scored 2 rushing TDs.

Lyons and Nicolaisen will anchor the receiving corps this year. Lyons caught 14 passes for 210 yards and Nicolaisen snagged 9 for 137 yards.

The Hawks have some key holes to fill on defense, but have back two of their top four tacklers—Ritchie and Bardole.

Both of EG’s non-district opponents are located in southern Marion County, south of Knoxville and Pella.

Melcher-Dallas: Melcher and Dallas are not a combined school district like Paton-Churdan or Glidden-Ralston, but actually one town. But they were merged. Dallas was established first in the southwestern corner of the county on one rail line and Melcher, a coal mining town, was formed on a different rail line but the towns were less than a mile apart. The distance grew smaller over the years and they basically grew into each other. The two were officially merged in 1986, but each still maintains its own zip code.

The Saints went 3-2 and finished third in the six-team District 6 last year and 4-6 overall. MD lost to Ankeny Christian 69-28 in the substate round of the playoffs. The Saints are led by returning QB Robert Bingham, one of the top returning quarterbacks in 8-man as he threw for 2,220 yards and 31 touchdowns last season. Also back is offensive end Josh Schrader, who had 661 yards receiving and 7 TDs.

Twin Cedars (Bussey): Predominantly a rural school district, Twin Cedars encompasses six very small towns in the southeastern corner of the county. The towns are Bussey, Attica, Hamilton, Tracy, Marysville and Pershing. When the district was formed in 1961 it was a merger of the existing schools in Bussey, Tracy and Attica. Attica is the most western of the towns while Bussey and Tracy are the most eastern. Tracy is almost right on the Marion-Mahaska county line and Bussey is less than a mile west of the county line.

A new high school was built in the country east of Bussey on County Road G71 across the county line into Mahaska County in 1961, as the school district also encompasses all of Jefferson Township in the southwestern corner of Mahaska. A gym was added in 1970 and a new elementary school built on the site in 1976. The school takes its name from the north and south branches of Cedar Creek that flow through the district.

TC has a BEDS enrollment (grades 9-11 in 2009-10) of 125 while Melcher-Dallas is closer in size to East Greene (81) with a BEDS enrollment of 85. The Sabers finished fifth in D5 last year at 1-4 and were 2-7 overall.

In head-to-head competition last year, Melcher-Dallas beat Twin Cedars 70-28 in the last game of the season.

Lincoln League Title Up for Grabs

With last year’s co-champs—Adair-Casey and CAM—now over in District 6, the race for the top of “Lincoln League” is up for grabs. GR and CRB seem to be getting the most attention as they tied for third last year, ending the season with identical 3-2 and 7-2 marks. Each lost in the substate round to end the year at 7-3.

GR returns much of its punishing ground game from last year while CRB will again feature its high-octane aerial attack. Senior QB Michael Schwenk passed for 2,940 yards and 53 TD’s last year while adding another 637 yards and 13 TDs on the ground.

Ar-We-Va and Woodbine both qualified for the playoffs last year as they ended up with Remsen-Union in a three-way tie for second at 5-2 (all 6-3 overall) just behind D1 champion St. Mary’s (Remsen). But all four of the D1 teams were knocked out of the substate round to their D2 competitors. It was the worst substate performance of any of the 8 districts.

Ar-We-Va loses nine players off that squad and will be in a bit of rebuilding this phase, but the Rockets are always competitive.

Boyer Valley is the mystery team, moving down from Class A where it went 2-4 in District 8, finishing in a three-way tie for fourth. Overall, BV was 4-5. Traditionally, when teams make that first year move from A down to 8-man they do very well. EG went 7-2 in its first year in 8-man in 2001 as did CRB in 2002.

When GR made the move in 2005, the Wildcats went 8-1 and won the District 4 crown with a perfect 5-0 mark. GR did not lose a district game over the next three seasons, qualifying for the playoff each year. GR went undefeated and won the state 8-man championship in 2005 and went undefeated again in 2007 before falling to Ar-We-Va, the team it beat to win the district crown, in the quarterfinal round of the playoffs.

Overall, D7 was very competitive last year as the teams went 12-3 against the other districts in the weeks before intra-district play got underway. That was topped only by District 6, which includes Lenox and Ankeny Christian, which went 13-3. D6 gets even tougher this year with Adair-Casey and CAM in the mix while Grandview Park Baptist moves over to D5.

Districts 5, 1 and 8 had the worst showings at 5-11 and that prevailed in the playoff round as those districts had the fewest teams advancing from the substate to the first round.

East Greene 2010 Football Schedule
(Game time for all is 7 p.m.)
Aug. 27: Melcher-Dallas H
Sept. 3: Twin Cedars (Bussey) A
Sept. 10: Boyer Valley H
Sept. 17: Charter Oak-Ute A
Sept. 24: Glidden-Ralston H (HOMECOMING)
Oct. 1: Woodbine A
Oct. 8: Walnut H (PARENTS’ NIGHT)
Oct. 15: Coon Rapids-Bayard A
Oct. 22: Ar-We-Va A


EYE ON GJ SAYS: Melcher-Dallas is a good first-game test for EG as the Hawks’ defense was its strong suit last year. If the Hawks can contain Bingham and his aerial attack it will stand in their favor for stronger teams that pass a lot like CRB as the season progresses.

Iowa Sports Connection has CRB ranked No. 5 in its pre-season Top 10. Northeast Hamilton from D3 is getting some attention also as ISC ranks NEH sixth. CRB and NEH square off tonight in Blairsburg in the season opener for both teams.

The online BC Moore pre-season rankings have CRB, NEH and GR at seventh, eighth and ninth. Ar-We-Va comes in at No. 20 and EG is close behind at No. 24.

BC Moore gave the Hawks some good feedback, noting that EG’s improvement over the last five years is second only to that of CWL (Corwith). EG has improved from 46th to 35th to 30th to 29th to 24th since 2006.

In the Associated Press poll released this week, NEH is ranked No. 7 at 1-0 after a season opening win over Twin River Valley (Bode) 65-6 last week. All the other teams are 0-0 as they kick off their seasons tonight. CRB is among six teams that received votes in the poll but not enough to rank in the top 10. Lenox, No. 1 in the AP poll, takes on No. 9 ranked Stanton tonight in Stanton.

The Des Moines Register poll this week has Lenox at the top and Stanton eighth and Northeast Hamilton ninth.