In a rare Friday edition of Lots O’ Stuff we catch up on a couple of items that have been sitting around for a while, a Jackson High School grad’s daughter has earned some hardware to match her dad’s, a former local coach is back in the state tournament and some info from Iowa.
Aggen elevated
Following two seasons as Director of Operations for the Iowa State volleyball program, Jackson County Central graduate Michelle (Van Epps) Aggen has added assistant coach to her job title with the Cyclones.
Iowa State was 10-18 overall last season, 4-13 in the Big 12.
Her husband, Worthington graduate and former JCC girls basketball coach Chris Aggen, will also have a new job this summer.
He will become the high school principal in the Webster City Community School District on July 1.
Chris has been associate principal/director of Learning Supports in the Perry School District for two years.
Handevidt coaches state champs
Jackson County Central graduate Hailey Handevidt was an assistant coach at Harrisburg, which the South Dakota Class AA (largest of two classes) team title in Watertown recently.
The Tigers had a team score of 152.983 winning the title. That’s the highest score (152.983) in the 51-year history of the South Dakota state meet.
Harrisburg also had two individual gold medalists.
5 is the number for the Draines
The number five was a good one for Dan Draine back in the day when he was a runner on Jackson Blue Jay cross country and track and field teams coached by Gary Hildebrandt.
And this past weekend it was a good one for one of his daughters.
First, Dan, who is now a proud dad of a pair of talented gymnasts.
But just shy of 30 years ago Dan was one of the top high school cross country and track athletes in the area.
As a JHS senior, Dan placed fifth in a field of 135 runners at the state Class A cross country meet at St. Olaf College with a 5K time of 16:35.3.
According to Hilde, the next spring Dan was on Jackson’s sprint medley relay team that placed fifth in the state meet in Blaine as the final group of student-athletes to compete for the Jackson Blue Jays.
Back to cross country in the fall of 1996, that was Dan’s third trip to state. He placed 11th as both a sophomore and junior before moving up in his final appearance.
Jackson placed second as a team behind Staples-Motley (69-81) is his senior year.
Dan and Matt Williams were seniors on that Blue Jay team.
Junior runners at the state meet were Ethan Thurmer, Mark Zelinko, Mitch Olson and Brian Vrchota. Rounding out the team was sophomore Nathanial Draine.
Side note: Those four juniors from the 1996 Jackson team added two sophomores, Ryan Hansen and Steve Majerus; and freshman Brad Vrchota as the first-ever Jackson County Central boys cross country team and that squad placed fourth as a team at the state meet.
Now for Dan and his wife Nikki’s daughters, who compete for Prior Lake/Shakopee/Jordan.
Annie, a senior, qualified for last weekend’s state Class AA meet in all around. Her highest placing was on balance beam, where she finished fifth with a score of 9.325.
Their other daughter, Clare, is a sophomore who competed at state on bars.
Back in state tourney
Former Windom Area coach Jon Ammerman has led his Moorhead team to the state Class AA boys hockey tournament for the seventh time in the last nine years. The top-seeded Spuds beat second-seeded Bemidji 8-1 in the Section 8AA championship game in Thief River Falls.
The next day he posted this on social media:
Ammerman’s first two seasons as a head coach were with Windom Area, which was 11-8-1 in the 2011-2012 season and 13-10 in 2012-2013.
It was felt that Ammerman wouldn’t be in southern Minnesota for long, but circumstances pulled him away from the Eagles and back home quicker than anyone liked in 2013.
Ammerman is a Moorhead graduate who played two seasons in the United States Hockey League and went on to play at St. Cloud State. He’s also been an assistant coach with the Minnesota District USA-S17 team.
The Spuds are rated second in Class AA by Let’s Play Hockey and have a record of 25-2-1.
Their losses were 8-7 to No. 1 Hill-Murray, which plays for the Section 4AA title Friday night and 3-2 to Wayzata, which lost to Edina in the Section 6AA title game. The tie was 2-2 with Rogers, which is in the state tournament field as the Section 5AA champion.
Pairings for the state tournament will be announced Saturday.
South of the border
Jackson County Central’s girls and boys basketball teams have had an intrastate matchup with Estherville Lincoln Central for a number of years.
ELC’s girls basketball program has always been strong and the Midgets have been on a particularly nice run in recent years.
They’ve made it to the state Class 3A championship game three straight years, winning the title in 2022. And coach Don Martindale’s team is headed to Des Moines the first week in March for the fourth straight year.
It’s not certain if the JCC-ELC will be able to continue as the Midgets are members of the historic Lakes Conference, but that league is coming to an end after an 80-year run.
However, its girls basketball teams are certainly going out with a flourish.
The conference is down to five teams, of which three have earned berths in the state Class 3A tournament. And a fourth could advance in Class 4A.
Spirit Lake, Estherville Lincoln Central and Cherokee all won Class 3A regional titles on Saturday. And Storm Lake will play for a Class 4A region title on Tuesday.
As an outsider, the way those regions were drawn up seems puzzling. Here’s what happened last Saturday:
Spirit Lake’s bus traveled through Estherville, where ELC was hosting Hampton-Dumont-CAL in the Region 6 championship game. The Indians were on their way to Algona to play the Bulldogs for the Region 8 title.
It seems out of the ordinary that a team would travel a half hour to a town that’s in a different region and then have to keep going for another hour to find a team in its same region. But there are other events happening in the country that deserve more attention.
Anyway, 12th-ranked Spirit Lake defeated No. 8 Algona 61-53 and No. 6 ELC won 49-31 over No. 11 HDC.
At the same time, another Lakes Conference school, No. 5 Cherokee, was at home recording a 54-33 win over Atlantic to win Region 5.
Two of the three will meet up in the state quarterfinals at 6:45 p.m. on Monday, March 6 as No. 4 seed Cherokee (21-3) plays No. 5 Estherville Lincoln Central (20-3). That game will be followed at 8:30 p.m. by No. 7 seed Spirit Lake (17-7) facing No. 2 Dubuque Wahlert Catholic (19-4).
Storm Lake could have made it four out of five conference teams in the state tourney, but the Tornadoes lost at No. 7 ranked Sioux Center in the Region 7 championship game Tuesday.
All of this comes as the Lakes Conference is on its way out.
In December it was announced that the Siouxland Conference had extended invitations to Cherokee, ELC, Spencer and Storm Lake to join starting in the 2026-27 academic year. And then in January it was announced that those schools will officially join the conference on Aug. 1, 2026, along with Spirit Lake and former Lakes Conference member Western Christian to form a 16-school conference.
It’s too early to know how many dates will be open for games against teams from outside the new Siouxland Conference.
Schools in the Big South Conference have experienced that since the Southwest and South Central conferences merged to form the BSC in the 2014-2015 school year. And then this year came two additions from the former Minnesota River Conference.
JCC’s basketball teams both played only four teams outside the BSC this season, ELC, Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial and Maple River.
Both teams played two games at a holiday event where one of the games was against the Big South’s Marshall. In the other games the girls played MACCRAY and the boys played Montevideo.
Minnesota high school basketball teams can play 26 regular-season games, although a 27th game can be added if it’s a conference championship game. Iowa’s teams are capped at 21 games.
Also, Iowa teams are not allowed to play games from Dec. 24-Jan. 1. With holiday tournaments, Minnesota teams play two or three games in that span
Fun fact
Saturday Night Live’s existence is partly due to Johnny Carson’s desire for more vacation days.
In 1974, Johnny Carson requested that NBC stop airing The Tonight Show reruns on the weekend.
He wanted to save those reruns for the extra vacation days he was planning to take during weekdays.
NBC wanted to fill those weekend slots, so they hired Lorne Michaels to develop a show.
Bob Uecker and Billy Crystal on Saturday Night Live in October 1984.