Here's a look at sports from Southwest Wisconsin.
Many high school events going on tonight.
The top one, perhaps the cross country meet in basketball.
It's the Greg Bell night meat.
The Greg Bell invotational and it involves these schools,
Aquinas, Argyle, basketball, cashton, central,
Cuba City, Darlington, Dodgeville, Phenomore,
Hillsboro, Iowa, Grant, Kickaboo LeFarge,
Monroe, North Crawford, Peccatonic, Argyle,
Plattville, Prairie Dushin, Richland Center,
Ithaca, River Ridge, River Valley, Riverdale,
Southwestern, Varroqua, Wozika Stuban,
and Boscabel.
So some notes on the cross country tonight getting
into way around 715 for the first varsity and JV runs.
Also soccer action, Dodge Point is playing at River Valley
this evening for a conference matchup.
And then lots of volleyball, including Wozika Stuban
at North Crawford.
There's a quad going on hosted by the Trojans tonight.
Ithaca is at Weston.
There's a varsity quad with Kickaboo and LeFarge present.
And Boscabel will be at Riverdale tonight in the SWAL.
In the Southwest Conference, Prairie Dushin at Lancaster,
Dodgeville plays volleyball at Plattville,
and Richland Center is at River Valley.
I have the chance to talk to River Valley coach
Mariah Hill this week.
She talked about the start of the season for River Valley.
So we started a little bit slow.
Our first match against Plattville.
But we have definitely been moving up the ladder
and improving every day.
And we're getting stronger and stronger,
which is exactly what we want throughout the season.
She says the teams are getting better in recent matches.
Last Thursday against Prairie Dushin.
That was a great win.
And then this past weekend at the Fox tournament,
we played some really good matches, made some changes,
and ended up beating Plattville, who beat us in our opener,
and also beating a really strong Oregon team.
So that was really a momentum builder for our group.
Here are the match tonight, Richland Center at River Valley,
and the pre-match time to begin around seven o'clock.
Tomorrow night, it's weekend number five of high school football.
It's unbelievable that is the case getting halfway through
with the regular schedule.
The Richland Center Hornets gets had to take on Plattville
after disappointing loss last week to New Glarris,
in a game that had lots of penalties.
And it took a long time to mark all those
and determine where they were going to be marked.
I talked to Coach Andy Truxel about how the Hornets struggled last week.
What I'll tell you is, I mean, that's an uncontrollable for us, right?
I mean, we have no influence over how that game is called.
But it's really hard to get refocused and retooled
when you can never really get in front of the chains.
When you're always kind of playing from behind.
And so a lot of our good drives that were there,
you'd have an explosive play and then you'd have to set back, right?
Explosive play and then another set back.
Get into the red zone and then it would be a set back.
And so that's tough.
And that's certainly not solely on any of the officials for that game.
I mean, when we look at how we graded our kids out after the New Glarris game,
and there was a common pattern, it was a theme.
It was, you know, carousel of errors.
You know, a lot of kids, you know, they had critical errors.
You know, one block happens here, right?
Or one more thing happens there, right?
It's a different outcome.
I mean, that's six points.
That's changing momentum here and there.
So that was our message of the sweet to the boys is that, you know,
these details are not just things that we talk about.
These are things that are important.
And when they become important towards the execution of a play,
you know, that's when things are going to start clicking.
And so thus far, I mean, our practices have been a lot more intentional,
a lot more focused, you know, going forward.
And hats off to my captains.
I mean, they're the ones that wanted to have the conversation with the team.
But this is our identity.
This is who we are.
That was not who we aimed to be.
You know, so we want to do better as we kind of go forward in the rest of SWC play.
The Hornets shows Pladville on Friday night.
Also, Riverdale is coming off a loss against Wozika Seneca.
I talked to Riverdale coach Jeff Johnson this week.
Yeah, well, I think it's a good team.
They're ranked a foreign all.
But we went into the game knowing that we could compete with them.
And I really believe we did.
We rushed for over 160 yards and held them to around 160 yards.
So we were pretty even in that area.
I want a couple of categories statistically.
We want to turn over battle.
We had very few penalties.
But we just, we gave up three big plays that really cost us.
When you look at your team, sometimes it's just one play or two away, isn't it?
It really was, you know, all the way back to the Ithaca game and each game since then.
We competed.
We held a 76 lead going into the second quarter.
And we gave up a punt return for a touchdown and an interception for a touchdown.
And a long pass play for a touchdown.
Otherwise, our defense played very well.
We moved the ball in offense.
Overall, I thought we played very well.
We just got to find a way to get it done.
The Riverdale football team will be home on Friday night at Pickering Park
when they will host River Ridge.
Merchants bowling league action last night at the Phoenix Center,
Gerner Farms 29-82, Phoenix 2 with a 28-74
and Goblin insurance a 27-72.
Gerner Farms with a top game, a 10-69 and a 9-94,
Cast and Tools, 973, AutoZone, a 9-71.
Top series, Trayton Shep, 7-33, Jason Gerner, 7-30,
Andy Keller, a 6-83.
And the top individual games, Jason Gerner had a 279 and a 259.
Trayton Shep had a 268 and a Keller, a 258.
And a split pickup, Channing Brown, picked up the big four,
7-6-10.
He and the Merchants league at the Allies last night.
Centerfielder Blake Perkins tripled and drove in a career high five runs
in Wednesday night's 9-2 Brewer's victory over the Angels.
South Freelica had a three-run homer and Brandon Woodruffer
in the pitching victory with five solid innings.
Perkins talked about a night like he had.
I mean, definitely like confidence boost.
You know, being able to come through for the guys, that's always big.
But yeah, definitely tough few weeks.
I feel like the last couple days have been good,
like it's trying to reset mentally.
And I mean, all these guys support me every day
and it's good to have some results like go my way.
So it feels great.
The Brewer's go for the sweep tonight against their opponent,
the Angels, behind starting pitcher, Quinn Priester.
The Cubs wrapped up a playoff birth with an 8-4 victory over Pittsburgh.
They celebrated in Chicago last night.
Cincinnati 6-2 over St. Louis.
San Francisco 5, Arizona 1.
Atlanta 9, Washington 4.
San Diego 7-4 over the Mets.
Miami 8, Colorado 4.
The Dodgers 5, nothing over Philadelphia.
In the American League, Baltimore 3, the White Sox 1.
Tampa Bay 2-1 over Toronto.
Cleveland 4 Detroit nothing.
Boston beat the Athletics 5-4.
Kansas City 7, Seattle 5.
Yankees 10-5 over Minnesota.
Houston 5-2 winners against Texas.
Bad news for the NFC North.
Packers linebacker Micah Parsons back injury has healed.
For the first time this season, he's not on Green Bay's injury report.
Even though they were limited participants in practice,
two other starters say they will be ready to go on Sunday.
Left guard Aaron Banks and right tackle Zach Tom.
We're hurt during the season opener against the Lions.
Other hurting players like Don TV and Wicks, Matthew Golden,
Quay Walker and Baron Surrell have used the extra long layoff
to get a little more healthy.
That's an update on sports this morning.
I'm Phil Ne.
