Mid-Season Report for the Bulldog Winter Sports Teams

The one word to use to sum up the first half of the season for the Hampton-Dumont-CAL Bulldog winter athletes would be weather. The Bulldog athletes had a lot of games and meets in the first half of the season canceled or postponed due to mother nature. The three winter sports teams head into winter break with some momentum to carry them into a busy second half of the season for all the teams.

Girls Basketball

The Hampton-Dumont-CAL girls basketball team would pick up their first win of the season in dramatic fashion with a buzzer-beating three. The Bulldogs would battle the Lynx in a back-and-forth game. The final second would be ticking off the clock as the Jordan Valley would drive and put a shot up that would lead to a long rebound to her sister. Brooklyn would pick the ball up step behind the three point line and drill the step back three as time would run off the clock. The refs would put 1 second back on the clock and the Bulldogs would steal the inbound pass and earn the win 41-39. Brooklyn Valley would lead the team in scoring with 19 points, going 5 for 9 from behind the arc. Jordan Valley would add 11 more points for the Bulldogs. Fellow sophomore Charlee Morton would add 8 points and six rebounds.

Entering the break, the Bulldogs have a 1-6 record with a 1-3 conference record. Battling through some early season injuries has been an issue for the Bulldogs, but the break should allow them to get healthy and figure out a good rotation of players. Brooklyn Valley leads the team in scoring at 11.3 points per game, with Jordan averaging 11. Lily Hambly is averaging 7.3 points per game and leads the team at 8.1 rebounds per game. The Bulldogs as a team average just over 28 points per game.

The first game out of break for the Bulldogs is a rescheduled game against the 9th ranked Osage Green Devils in Osage on Thursday January 5th. Followed by a home game against the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Cowgirls at home on Friday January 6th. The Bulldogs should look to build off of their momentum into the second half of the season and having all their players healthy should definitely help.

Boys Basketball

The H-D-CAL Boys basketball team has continued to grow and develop under first year coach Brian Niesen. After a win to start the season, the Bulldogs have come close, but have not been able to put another notch in the win column. Throw in mother nature postponing games it has been a tough start to the season for the Bulldogs. Their final game before winter break would also be against the 10th ranked Webster City Lynx. The Bulldogs would play arguably their best game of the season against a quality NCC opponent but would lose the game 53-43. Junior, Scott Harr would earn his fourth double-double of the season scoring 19 points and grabbing 14 rebounds while also dishing out 4 assists. Senior Will Sackville would add 13 points on 3 for 5 3-point shooting and grab 6 rebounds. The loss would drop the Bulldogs record to 1-3 on the season and 0-2 in the North Central Conference.

The Bulldogs should look to utilize break to continue to grow as a team and look forward to playing their best basketball in January then into February. Harr has looked to dominate on the court for the Bulldogs averaging 18.8 points per game and 14.8 rebounds per game. Seniors Tommy Birdsell, averaging 10.8 points per game, and Will Sackville, averaging 9.5 points per game, are second and third in scoring for the Bulldogs. As a team the Bulldogs are averaging just over 52 points per game on 40% shooting from the field.

As the Bulldogs prepare for the second half of the season, they must continue to play aggressive, but controlled basketball. They should look to use the break to make improvements shooting to compete in a tough North Central Conference. They open up out of break at Osage with a non-conference, rescheduled game with the Osage Green Devils on Thursday. They return home for a NCC game against the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows Cowboys.

Wrestling

The Hampton-Dumont-CAL Bulldog wrestling team like the basketball teams has also had to battle the weather during the first half of the season. Hard to believe the team has only wrestled in four duals before winter break. That will lead to a pack second half of the season. The Bulldog wrestlers should be prepared for the second half after opening up the season with two tough tournaments and some tough duals. The team battled through some illness at the beginning of the season and should be poised for a break-out in the second half. A team that was ranked as a dual team most of the season last year, has yet to make an appearance in any rankings this season. The Bulldogs will have lots of opportunities to change that as they will wrestle a lot of tough competition both in conference duals and at dual tournaments. The changes that the Iowa High School Athletic Association made to the state tournament will now be seen. State duals has been moved from the Wednesday before state wrestling to the weekend that used to be the sectional wrestling tournament. The state tournament returns to a four day event with the brackets growing from 16 to 24. The state also split up districts with 8 teams at each of the 12 districts across the state. Each district will still have 2 qualifiers from each weight. The Bulldogs travel to Webster City for districts on February 11th.

The Bulldogs have two ranked wrestlers currently at the smallest and biggest weight. Juniors Jayson Stevens and Carter Heilskov are ranked 5th in the state at their respective weights. Stevens enters break with a 10-5 record with 4 pins. All of his losses are to ranked kids and none of them are wrestlers in class 2A. Stevens should return to dominate form in the second half of the season with some tough matches coming up. Heilskov enters the break with an 8-2 record with 6 pins. Both of his losses were at Donnybrook to out-of-state wrestlers, one of them being the 5th ranked heavyweight in the country. Heilskov had two big wins at the Jim Kinyon Invitational over ranked wrestlers. He should look to continue his dominance into the second half of the season. Other wrestlers to watch in the second half of the season for the Bulldogs are junior Cael Burmester and sophomores, Charlie Showalter and Taylor Mahler. Burmester has put together an impressive start to his junior campaign with an 8-5 record. Showalter has been in the latter part of the rankings all season with a 10-7 record. Mahler leads the team in wins with 11 and some impressive wins over ranked wrestlers. Freshman Brody Strother leads the team in pins with 8 and is a kid that I would not sleep on in the second half of the season. The Bulldogs return to action Tuesday at home against Algona, Ballard, and Humboldt, then Thursday head to Webster City. Saturday was supposed to be the home dual tournament, Deike Duals, for the Bulldogs, but it was canceled, and the Bulldogs will head to Cresco instead.