Jackson County Central senior Ben Dahlin played for the winning South team in the Minnesota High School Football All-Star Game Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium. The game is sponsored by the Minnesota Football Coaches Association and the Minnesota Vikings.
Dahlin intercepted a pass and also broke up a pass in the South’s 24-10 win to take an 11-3 lead in the series under the North-South format.
He is JCC’s 13th representative in the series. Prior to 1997, Jackson High School had 10.
College updates
It was a light weekend for area athletes.
Martin County West graduate Lucas Jagodzinske, a junior with the Augsbug College men’s wrestling team, placed second at 149 pounds at the North Central College Invitational in Naperville, Ill.
He went 4-1 with a pin, major decision and technical fall to improve to 13-3 on the season. The Auggies won the team title.
Jackson County Central grad Pat Garvin’s Bethany Lutheran College men’s basketball team is off to a 2-6 start. The Vikings are playing Gustavus Tuesday night in St. Peter.
JCC grad Brody Anderson is in his first season as an assistant coach with the Valley City State men’s basketball team, who are also known as the Vikings. VCSU is 9-4 with a game vs. Mount Marty Friday in Yankton.
Heron Lake native Hobie Hedquist has played in five games, starting four for the North Dakota men’s hockey team. His goals against average is 2.22 and he has a save percentage of .907.
The Fighting Hawks (11-7-1 overall and 6-2 in the NCHC) are off until an exhibition game vs. Manitoba on Jan. 4. UND returns to conference play at Arizona State Jan. 10-11.
Another Heron Lake native, Hayden Hedquist, has played in 15 games for Amarillo of the United States Hockey League. The Wranglers (11-13-0-2) are at the Odessa Jackelopes Sunday and then host the Colorado Grit for two games the following weekend.
Three Windom graduates are members of the Dordt University men’s hockey team of the American Collegiate Hockey Association.
Senior forward Zach Espenson leads the team in scoring with seven goals and 13 assists for 20 points and junior defenseman Alex Espenson is fourth (7-9-16). Also playing for Dordt is sophomore forward Brady Espenson (3-6-9).
The Defenders are 14-2-1. They’re off until Jan. 3-4 when they play Florida Gulf Coast in a two-game series at Hertz Arena in Estero, Fla.
If they’re in town on New Year’s Eve, they can see Jim Gaffigan in that same arena. Maren and I are seeing Jim Gaffigan (and Jerry Seinfeld) in Omaha on Jan. 17.
Rest of the story
(In Paul Harvey voice) Now….the rest of the story.
Now, a lot of you probably need to Google Paul Harvey.
Received a text from an unnamed reader after our post about the two notable Vikings events on the same date.
That text started with the belief that the Vikings win over the Browns that day knocked Tom Schuller’s Detroit Lions out of the playoffs. While that may not be 100 percent accurate, we won’t let that stand in the way of a good story.
After that 1980 game, Schu put a “curse” on the Browns. Again, in the interest of full disclosure, Molly Hunt wouldn’t become a Browns fan for a few more years, but on with the story.
He takes a lot of credit for the Browns failures for all of those years.
Recently, Schu lifted the curse in order to help Molly.
That said, they’re still the Browns. The glass half full side of that for Molly is that it’s unlikely that any Cleveland game on Fox will attract the No. 1 crew and Tom Brady.
Fun fact
This really isn’t a fun fact for the two subjects in the previous segment.
There are four teams that have never appeared in a Super Bowl.
Two of them are Schu’s Lions and Molly’s Browns. Both did win NFL championships prior to the creation of the Super Bowl in the 1966 season.
The others, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans, were not.
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Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra with Marshmallow World from Dean’s 1967 Christmas special. It seems so foreign now to see people smoking.