Speaking of Sports

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

•  Vikings pull off pair of big wins — I still can’t believe how lucky the Vikings were with their win over New Orleans in the game played in England two Sundays ago.  It takes quite a few lucky bounces to have a ball kicked from 50-60 yards out hit the goal posts twice without somehow going through.  Add in this past Sunday’s last-drive touchdown to pull out the win over Chicago, and who knows, this could be the Vikings’ year.

•  Football contest –Well, we’re into the sixth week of the football contest already so if you’re thinking of giving it a try, you’re running out of time.  For those of you who have paid attention, it’s taken only 8 or 9 correct picks out of 12 most weeks (not this week, though) to win some money.  For those of you who are trying it on their own, but not sending in an entry, congratulations if you beat the winners, but too bad you didn’t send in your entry.  However, you still have time.

•  Soccer team to play on the road in playoff opener — When the Minnewaska boys soccer team was shut out by Prinsburg in the second game of the season, 3-0, I didn’t see much chance the Lakers could surpass the Bluejays for the second seed in their half of Section 8A, but boy, they sure came close.  The Lakers rebounded to go 7-4 over their final 11 games, pushing past the Bluejays in the QRF ranking, but it still wasn’t enough to earn a first-round home game.

Section 8A seedings were determined by QRF ranking so not only did the Lakers have to move ahead of the Bluejays, they also had to do so by a far enough amount to overcome the earlier loss to Prinsburg.  In the final tally, Minnewaska had a QRF of 34.4 and ranking of 40th out of 76 Class A soccer teams, while Prinsburg had a QRF of 32.7 and was ranked 43rd overall.  However, because the Lakers lost to Prinsburg earlier this year, they needed to be ahead of the Bluejays by the QRF tiebreaker margin of about 2.5, which they fell a little short of.  Either way, it should be a great first-round playoff matchup.

•  Volleyball team playing great — The Laker volleyball team is playing very good right now, but is also having a tough time moving up the Section 3AA seedings.  The Lakers had won five-straight matches, including two five-game wins over BOLD and WCA the last two Thursday nights, before losing four tight matches at the Alexandria Invite this past weekend.  However, the Lakers were still seeded seventh of the eight teams in its half of the section as of Monday morning.

Paynesville (16-4) is the current top seed in the north half of the section, followed by NLS (13-10), EV-Watkins (15-8), Litchfield (13-10), West Central Area (13-7), Morris Area (6-6), the Lakers (8-6) and ACGC (3-12).  The Lakers should overtake Morris Area if they can beat the Tigers, Oct. 18, but it might be a little harder to catch any of the other teams unless Minnewaska can pull off a couple of major upsets during the rest of the regular-season.  In the other half of the section, Pipestone (17-3) is first, Jackson County Central (13-8) is second and Montevideo (3-13) is sixth despite losing to the Lakers twice this season.