Jake Pfeifer
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Jake Pfeifer is a sports reporter and outdoors editor for RiverTown Multimedia. Previously, he worked at Detroit Lakes Newspapers.
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- Member for
- 5 years 8 months
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The Red Wing girls' soccer team is welcoming a new but familiar face as head coach this fall — 2008 Red Wing High School graduate, Taylor Becker. In addition to head coaching duties with the Red Wing Soccer Club from 2012-2016, she also played goalkeeper for the Wingers in her high school years.
One year ago, the Red Wing boys' soccer team was hoping its underclassmen would step up and provide depth and variety to its small senior core. Growing pains ensued but growth was apparent to the coaching staff. Heading into this season with first-year head coach Nate Weess, the Wingers intend to turn that growth into more wins on the pitch.
Last season was a milestone year for the Red Wing boys' cross-country team. The team won the Big Nine Conference for the second consecutive year, took home the Section 1AA title and had the best finish at the state meet (seventh) since 1987. Considering the Wingers took 11th place at the state meet in 2016, improved last year and the core remains intact this year, the arrow is pointing up.
One year ago, Doug Toivonen and Drew Olinger took the reins of the Red Wing girls' tennis team by sharing head coaching duties. This year, with a full season behind them, they hope to turn that experience into a more competitive and successful team. The Wingers have a solid group of girls with its No. 1 and 2 singles players from last year (Chloe Struss and Graci Bettich) as well as one of its No. 1 doubles players (Mya Benway) returning.
As summer inches its way toward a close, many of the recreational leagues from around the area have wrapped up or are nearing that point. Before the temperature starts to drop and leaves turn color, though, there is one more milestone to hit — the 50-year anniversary of the Red Wing Church Softball League. On June 4 and 6 in 1968, the first church softball games were played in the Red Wing league created by Sid Lindstrom.
The Red Wing Aces, in its present-day form, has been around since 1971 and amateur baseball has been a mainstay in town since the early 20th century. However, building a roster year-in and year-out, especially a competitive one, hasn't always been straightforward in that time.
Hosting its first playoff game after getting a first-round bye, Red Wing was able to fend off Owatonna, 4-2, on Sunday at the Ath and get within one win of securing a state playoff berth. Nearly all of the scoring happened early in the game, with Owatonna putting up both of its runs during its initial crack at offense in the first inning. After a one-out single by Riley Thompson and double by Quinn Christenson, Benji Hager brought in two runs on a single with two outs. Red Wing responded with three runs of its own in the bottom of the inning to take the lead, however.
It's playoff time for the Red Wing Aces. Finishing the year with an 11-4 loss to Northfield on Tuesday, the Aces will now look ahead to its playoff opener against either Waseca or Owatonna on Sunday at the Ath. Red Wing concluded its regular-season slate with a torrid four-games-in-five-days stretch. The result of the condensed schedule was a 1-3 record. However, the Aces started the season 7-1, good enough to give them the No. 2 seed in the Region 5C playoffs.
MINNEAPOLIS — With all of the qualifying events in the books, the X Games at US Bank Stadium were all about handing out medals on Saturday. New Richmond, Wis., native and defending gold medalist in BMX Dirt, Colton Walker, faced one of the stiffest fields in any competition in the 2018 X Games. He hoped on using his "home field advantage" to his benefit. "The past three days I've been practicing and I've just been driving here so it's just like I'm having a normal session with all my friends," Walker said. "It's pretty cool; to have it here is sick."
The path to becoming a professional motocross racer isn't straightforward. Unlike mainstream sports like basketball and baseball, there is no option to hone the craft with a high school team. An even greater issue? Motocross tracks are scattered throughout the country with most aspiring athletes having to make the best of their surrounding resources. For Millville-born Alex Martin, motocross could be found all around him, although the path to professional riding wasn't always set in stone.