The men’s basketball season will be underway next week as they square off at home against non-conference opponent Wheaton College. Wheaton got the best of Loras last year in a 79-63 victory but will be facing a much improved Duhawk team this season.

The Duhawks got off to a slow start at the beginning of last year’s season, which was detrimental to their playoff chances. Things eventually began to click with the the second half of the season, but the hole was a bit too deep.

In their last six conference games last season, the Duhawks went 5-1 to make a push for a playoff spot but found themselves on the outside looking in after a four-team tie break scenario denied them a spot. They finished the season on the heels of a three-game win streak.

This year, the Duhawks will be led by five seniors: Brian Gaughan, Jordan Harrelson, Zack Peterson, Tim Kelly and Dan Pawelski. Pawelski finished last season as the team leader in points and rebounds averaging 11.8 points per game and 7.5 rebounds and received second-team all-conference honors for his play.

Head coach Greg Gorton expects “great leadership” out of these five men, and they have all been elected captains. Kelly and Harrelson also return as two-year starters, and are no strangers to putting up big stats.

IIAC Competition looks to be tough this year. The team everyone hopes to beat this year will be Luther who took home the conference championship last season. The Duhawks were 1-1 against Luther last season.

“Our expectations are a conference championship only,” said Gorton. “We learned a lot about ourselves a year ago and have most of the team back. We have the talent to beat any team in our league.”

The women’s basketball team will be returning all players from their conference championship run a year ago where they came within three points of advancing to the title game after falling to the #1 seed and eventual champions, Coe College.

The Duhawks finished the regular season with a 14-11 record overall and an impressive 10-6 record in the conference and ended the season with a five game win streak.

The lone senior on the team is Lindsey LaBadie, who led the team last season in points, rebounds and steals on her way to receiving first-team all-conference honors.

Along with LaBadie, the Duhawks return a strong class of juniors who all made huge impacts last season: Brit Kent (2^nd team all-conference), Melissa Herrmann, Niki Rivera, Brittney Cato, Rachel Kerchefske, and Kelly Rogowski, along with Katie Wheeler who returns from knee surgery after a strong freshman campaign.

The advantage of returning all starters from last year’s team should bode well for Loras.

“Game experience is something you cannot replace and returning our entire roster with the addition of a very talented freshman class will be an asset on game day,” said coach Justin Heinzen.

Coach Heinzen calls the conference championship, “an achievable goal” especially after last season’s’ late run.

“Our league should once again be one of the top conferences in NCAA DIII with Simpson, Coe, and Wartburg being picked as the top tier of our league,” said Heinzen. “But we know we can compete with any of those teams.”

The team’s motto last year was to take it one game at a time. With a developed sense of familiarity and talent, expect the Duhawks to make a strong push for a conference title this season.

Finishing the season as Co-Conference Champs would be something to celebrate for most programs across the country, but for the women’s soccer team, they are not satisfied yet. They will not be satisfied until they are sipping on their lemonade in San Antonio in December, and that journey starts now.

With their lone conference blemish coming as a tie to Wartburg, the Duhawks quite literally blew their competition out of the water. Only allowing four goals in conference play, they know that they are talented, but they feel they still have a lot to prove.

Senior captain Jess Kern is excited for the postseason because she knows that Loras has what it takes.

“We’re excited for the upcoming games because of the potential our team has. We feel we can be successful as a team and make it far.”

Total team play is what has gotten Loras to this point, and that is what they are going to lean on when it comes time for the NCAA Tournament.

After a slow start, the Duhawks seemed to heat up as the temperature went down. In the month of October alone, Loras owned a +34 goal differential, which is certainly a feat to be proud of. But none of that matters now, now it is time to play for the pride and glory that Loras is known for.

“We work for the entire year. It’s the best and most exciting time of the season. Every game we have to play our best and hardest because we never know when it could be the last time that we step out onto the pitch,” said senior captain Kate Young.

Loras took on the Luther College Norse on Wednesday evening with hopes to return to the Conference Championship match once again.

For the women, it’s “go time.”

After finishing their regular season at 14-2-3, the men’s soccer team is primed and ready for their postseason.

“We had a few slip-ups this year, but I think those help us prepare for the postseason,” said sophomore midfielder Kevin Cavers.

Loras closed their regular season by taking its frustrations out against an undermanned and overpowered Cornell squad. The men put a number on the scoreboard so crooked, that the scoreboard was barely hanging on after the 13 goals were scored.

They know, however, that those days are as good as gone. Now every team they face will know what is at stake, and if they have a slip up, their season may very well be over.

“The postseason is where the good teams are filtered out by the great teams. What we have worked for in the regular season doesn’t mean anything unless we do some great things in the postseason,” said senior captain and goalkeeper Nate DuBois.

Everyone would like to look forward to the NCAA Tournament, but the Duhawks know they have some work to do before they can celebrate anything. After a tie to Central and a loss to Luther, to guarantee an NCAA Tournament berth, Loras must be sure to win the Conference Tournament Championship.

“We know that every game from now on will be hard, so we have to come out with our best in order to keep going forward,” said sophomore forward Alejandro Cosmopolis. “We have to be ready to play 120’ but will always be looking to finish it in 90’.”

Can Loras return to the Final Four like the teams of 2007 and 2008? Only time will tell, but from the kind of season they have had, this team has all the makings of a National Championship contender.

by Jeff Schmidt

The volleyball team’s season is not finished just yet.

After struggling through many tournaments this season the Duhawks’ regular season schedule came to a close on Wednesday night against Cornell College.

Before the match against Coe College on Oct. 19, Loras honored seniors Kaity Frost, Julie Rogers, and Kelsey Smith for their contributions to the team over their four seasons as a Duhawk.

Each Duhawk has had their own unique role on the team, logging over 500 kills, 1,200 digs, and 3,300 assists combined.

“Senior night and our ‘Think Pink’ game were terrific ways to end the year on our home court,” said Frost. “We took what we knew about each team and worked as hard as we could to use that against them. Unfortunately we couldn’t come out with a win on senior night, but it was a hard fought, exciting game to end the year.”

During that ‘Think Pink’ night earlier this season, the game ended in a victory for the Duhawks over Central College, which secured a spot in the Iowa Conference tournament beginning Nov. 1.

While not doing as well as they had hoped last weekend in the UW-LaCrosse tournament – winning one out of the four matches – Loras is preparing to compete against fellow IIAC teams come November.

“We did secure our spot for the IIAC conference tournament, so we will be playing the first round on Tuesday, Nov. 1.

We are unsure of who our opponent is and where it will be played as of now,” said Frost.

That opponent will become known after Friday night’s matches between Luther and Cornell Colleges.

Regardless of the opponent, the Duhawks will be sure to be prepared for their competition as they set out to prove that they are even better than their record.

“I think the best way to sum up the season is that it was a very learning-experienced season,” said junior Kenzie Goedken. “It may not have turned out how the team would have liked, but it’s not over until that conference tournament and I think with the talent we have on the team we have to utilize that and we can definitely make winning the conference tournament an option.”

Regardless of how the end of the season turns out, the players that make up the team have a strong bond that senior Frost appreciates more than ever now that she is close to ending her collegiate athletic career.

“As far as my overall experience from freshman year to now, I’m so happy that this is the group of girls I get to be with for my senior year.  We are all so close and so goofy that it makes for a really fun year!”

The Duhawks may still be trying to find their identity on the football field under their new regime, but entering a bye week this week, the one main thing the team sorely needs is overall roster health.

Loras headed to Luther College this past weekend and came out on the wrong end of a 20-13 game, which gave Loras a record of 1-4 overall and 0-3 in the Iowa Conference. Luther is 1-4 overall with a 1-1 record in the conference.

“Saturday was frustrating. I don’t think we got beat by a better team Saturday. It was a good game overall, our players and coaches worked so hard to prepare for the game,” said Coach Paul Mierkiewicz. “But just because you work hard does not always mean it is going to translate to on the field.”

The game started out the same like the rest: sloppy. Luther received the ball after a botched punt by Loras and decided to go for it on 4th down. However, the Loras defense stood tall behind another strong performance by senior Zach Myers.

The offense had their turn, but quickly  turned the ball over on a fumble by receiver-turned-running back Billy Kass, which helped Luther get on the board first with a field goal.

“Real good defense again by our team, we are searching for an identity because in the first two games we put up a lot of offense, but struggled on defense,” said Mierkiewicz. “Now these past two weeks we have played great defense and struggled on offense. With the week off we get to look back at the way we are doing things, take a deep breath, and make sure we are executing the way we want.”

Senior Zach Myers improved on last week’s career best performance of 13 total tackles with 14 this week.

David Zoeckler tied with Myers with 14 total tackles and five solo. Junior Dan Badovinac and senior Eric Meyer each recovered fumbles, and juniors Kyle Kirchoff and Brandon Ronan teamed up to split Loras’ one sack of Luther’s Chris Reynolds.

Kass made up for his fumble early in the game by taking a 17-yard run into the endzone on Loras’ second offensive drive following the fumble.

The drive lasted eight plays for 53 yards, with all eight plays involving Kass running the ball until he found the end zone.

Coming out of halftime, tied at 6-6, Luther wasted no time breaking the tie on the first second half possession with a healthy mix of run and pass plays. They picked up four first downs along the way to the end zone, collecting 69 yards on the 12-play drive.

Loras would tie it up one more time in the third quarter on an 8-yard pass from senior Vaughn Gesing to fullback Kyle Bergquist before the eventual game winning touchdown by Luther in the 4th quarter.

Junior Billy Kass was the central focus of the Loras offense this past week rushing 32 times for a net gain of 119 yards, Kass is second in the conference in rushing with 521 yards on 126 attempts averaging 4.4 yards a carry.

Despite the positives of the running game, the team’s other playmaker, Vaughn Gesing, struggled throughout the game working through a separated shoulder he suffered homecoming weekend against Simpson.

“He did not practice at all last week due to the separated shoulder on the throwing arm, but he gutted it out, he is a courageous man,” said Mierkiewicz. “I think it hampered him and led to his timing being off. The ball was sailing on him and that made some passes go too high making things difficult during the game.”

Gesing completed 5-for-21 passes for 36 yards and two interceptions to go with his touchdown pass.

With half the season in the books, a bye week could not come at a better time for the Duhawks.

Mierkiewicz hopes the team can take advantage of the week by getting healthy, since the team has been going hard at it for almost seven weeks straight, dating back to training camp.

Loras will look to work on the offense, defense, and special teams this week to prepare a gameplan for when Central comes to the Rock Bowl on Oct. 15.

It is never easy working from the bottom to the top, but the Duhawks find themselves in an unwanted position coming off of a 21-3 homecoming loss to Simpson College.

Following the team’s second straight loss, Loras now is 0-2 in the Iowa Conference, and 1-3 overall.

“It was a frustrating day, especially when you’re the one calling plays on offense,” said Coach Paul Mierkiewicz. “It was just a frustrating day, but we will get through it.”

Despite the frustrations on the offensive side of the ball, the defense played a well-rounded game, spotlighted by the performance of senior linebacker Zach Myers.

“I thought the defensive coaches came up with a great plan, and our kids were aggressive, and that’s what you want to be defensively,” said Mierkiewicz. “I thought we held things in check. Simpson is a very good offensive team, and Zach Myers played tenaciously throughout the game, flying all over the field, which was part of the design of what we wanted to get done.”

Myers had 10 solo tackles, four tackles for loss, a sack and a forced fumble on the day, making him a special mention on the Iowa Conference “performers of the week” list.

“It feels good to get recognized by the IIAC for having a good game and that is a direct result of my coaches and teammates helping to put me in the right positions to make a play,” said Myers.

Offensively, Loras dominated the time of possession during the first quarter after it forced Simpson out after a four-minute, 10-play drive. Although Simpson’s punt pinned Loras at its own 1-yard line, the Duhawks  responded with a 10-minute, 18-play, 87-yard drive that it capped with a 27-yard field goal from junior Tyler Wilker.

Simpson had the ball to begin the second quarter, but Loras shut them down after seven plays. From there, Loras began to struggle against the Simpson defense. The Duhawks managed just 12 plays over the course of three possessions in the second quarter. Two of those possessions were three-and-outs that gained only three yards.

“The Simpson defense really stuck their safeties well into the linebacker box. That really posed problems for us,” said Mierkiewicz. “They did some nice things with coverage and were able to double up on some plays. When we get that pressure from safeties, it leads us to use our play-action plays, and we were not able to hit on all cylinders with a lot of that.”

Coming out of halftime trailing 7-3, the Loras offense still could not get it rolling. It ran the ball twice, then suffered a sack, and again had to punt.

“Defensively, I think we were great all day, and I would give us a high grade,” said Mierkiewicz. “Offensively, the first drive we executed well, but after that it seemed like we did not have 11 guys on the same page most of the second, third and fourth quarters.”

The numbers for some of the Loras playmakers were telling. Junior running back Billy Kass was held to 46 yards on 21 carries. Quarterback Vaughn Gesing completed 10-of-23 passes for just 90 yards, and he also had three interceptions. Gavin Kaiser led the receivers with four catches for 35 yards.

The defense did its part to keep Loras in the game in the third quarter as it held Simpson to just 4 yards on six plays.

But Gesing got sacked on first down, and that was followed by a fumble by junior running back Ryan Baez, giving the Storm the ball deep in Loras territory.

“Turnovers make it tough and are never things you want to see in the game,” said Mierkiewicz. “But the turnovers have come at bad times this season, and we just are not doing a good job of taking care of the ball on the offensive side.”

With Simpson deep in Loras’ territory, Storm quarterback Taylor Nelson threw a pass into the end zone that ended with an impressive one-handed grab by receiver Taylor Rogers. The Storm outgained the Duhawks 317-to-165 in total offense.

Loras saw a glimpse of hope when Zach Myers forced the ball out of running back Michael Chia’s arms on the Loras’ 2-yard line, but a deep pass on first down by Gesing resulted in an interception returned to the Loras 1-yard line. A quarterback-keeper by the Storm put an end to the scoring at 21-3.

“I think our defense played our best game of the year, and I feel we built a lot of confidence. With that being said, we still have a lot of room to improve,” said Myers.

Mierkiewicz mentioned that the focus in practice this week would be to go back to the basics for the offense and to figure some things out that have not been working for them. The Duhawks will hit the road this weekend with a visit to Luther College.

The men and women’s cross-country teams brought home impressive finishes on their annual trip to the highly competitive National Catholic Championships at Notre Dame last weekend.

The men’s team finished fourth overall among all non-Division I schools, which also was the best finish among all of the Division III schools at the competition.

The meet featured ranked Division I and Division II opponents, including Notre Dame and Bellarmine University.

Once again, senior Dan McDermott finished first for the Duhawks with a time of 25:30, good enough for 27th overall in the field of 250-plus runners (fourth overall among non-Division I schools).

Junior Austin Steil crossed the finish line next for the Duhawks, 20 seconds behind McDermott, finishing 21st among non-Division I competitors.

The next three runners for Loras to finish were first-year Rob Howe, junior Chris Higgins, and first-year Ty Wittman who all crossed within four seconds of one another to round out the Duhawks’ scoring.

Finishing sixth and seventh were first-years Steve Loran and Ryan Sheeran.

“I was very happy with the times and how our guys raced as a team,” said coach Bob Schultz. “I’m really proud of our whole team, the weather was ideal and the course was in great shape, which contributed to the very fast times.”

The men also finished in fourth place last year among non-Division I teams and nearly matched their score from a year ago, scoring 319 team points compared to last year’s 318.

McDermott also received Athlete of the Week accolades in the Iowa Conference with his 27th place finish out of 255 runners and the best time posted by a Division III entrant.

The team will travel to Minneapolis this weekend to compete at the Roy Griak Invitational and look to improve on their impressive finish from last year when they took 13th in what is annually one of the nation’s largest cross-country races.

The women also had a successful day at the Catholic Championships, placing 17th overall in the field of 33 Division I, II and III schools. They finished 7th overall among non-Division I schools.

Senior Genna Kinley led the way for the Duhawks for the second meet in a row, placing 51st overall and 14th among non-Division I competitors with a time of 18:53. Sophomore Mary Rector was the other Duhawk to finish in the top 100 in a field of more than 250 runners with a time of 19:14 to finish 86th overall.

Junior Katie Flogel, senior Katie Hemesath and first-year Belky Hilby finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively, for the Duhawks. Junior Maria Kalb and sophomore Kellie Wagner finished sixth and seventh.

“I was happy with our women’s times and how they raced as a team,” said Schultz. “Genna Kinley and Mary Rector both made the top 10 all-time list (for the 5K) at Loras. Katie Flogel and Kellie Wagner also had what could have been their best races as Duhawks.”

Schultz said that Kinley posted the seventh-best 5K time in Loras history, while Rector now has the ninth-best 5K time in school history.

Kinley also received Runner of the Week accolades in the Iowa Conference with her 54th-place finish overall out of 272 runners and placed 14th among non-Division I runners.

All the women saw a considerable amount of time shaved off their finish in comparison to last week’s meet.

“Our women got out better at the start and they also did a much better job racing as a team,” Schultz said. The women also will be in Minneapolis this weekend. Last year, they placed 13th out of 32 as a team dating back to last year. “We did well last year, and our hope is to have a good experience again this year.”

Nick Helten
Published: February 18, 2009

Starting the season without a conference win until January twenty-fourth is not great news for a wrestling program, but the Loras wrestlers found a way to turn things around. The Duhawks finished the season four and four in the IIAC Conference and looked to do damage at the conference tournament.

The Duhawk wrestlers were at it again Tuesday at Luther College for the Iowa Conference tournament.

Loras placed seven wrestlers in the top six, Senior Tom Drosopolis (125), Junior Mark Beatty (125), Sophomores Mike Levassaur (174) and Alex Grafft (197).
The two finalists were senior Jordan Loy (141) and junior Erik Hanson (157).

They both went into the tournament as the number two seed and came out as runner-ups.

Loy is currently ranked ninth in the nation while Hanson is ranked third.
Senior Trevor Kaufman (285) took third place which was just enough to get him through to the National tournament.

Final team standings here. Final individual standings here.

Nick Helten can be contacted at Nick.Helten@lctv13.com