Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
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By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — The younger team led all night, but the more experienced group made the plays in crunch time as Ironwood rallied past Wakefield-Marenisco for an improbable 50-48 season-opening win Monday night. The Cardinals led 48-39 after a Chase Lane 3 early in the fourth quarter, but they didn’t score again. W-M turned it over to Ironwood with 58.5 seconds left and the Devils’ returning All-U.P. player, Axton Ruotsala, pulled up for a long 2 to tie the game at 48. He then stole the inbound pass, givin...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] LANSING — The MHSAA is going all in on seeding for its boys and girls district basketball tournaments in the spring. The state had only dipped its toes into seeding for the last several years — it ranked only the top two teams with the goal of the best teams meeting in the district final. But that’s all it did. The higher seeded teams weren’t guaranteed to get the home games it seemingly earned and the 1 seeds didn’t always get to play the weaker teams leading up to the district final. Now all of the te...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MINNEAPOLIS — Ella Pavlovich, whose grandparents are all from the Gogebic Range, was a member of the University of Minnesota’s Big Ten champion women’s track-and-field team during the spring. She finished 21st in the hammer at that meet with a mark of 173 feet, 6 inches. “It was an awesome experience because I don’t think it was expected,” Pavlovich said of the Big Ten championship. Her personal best throw of 176-0 was good for a win at the Janis Rider-Doug Bolstorff Invite. She finished runner-up a...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MARQUETTE — Wakefield-Marenisco junior Noelle Grace earned a spot on the All-U.P. volleyball team for the second year in a row. After making the Division 4 First Team last year, Grace this year became one of 16 Dream Team selections in voting at last week’s second annual volleyball meeting of the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. Ironwood’s Audra Pawlak and Hanna Vaughn were selected to the Division 1-3 First Team with a trio of Ewen-Trout Creek players named to the Division 4 F...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Gogebic won its home opener 75-62 over the Northland College JV team Thursday night. The Samsons started fast and led 43-24 at halftime. They needed that margin as Northland fought back to make it a closer game in the second half. Gogebic was playing the second night of a back-to-back after a nice win at Marshfield the night before, but it was a late trip. The Samsons, though, only played well in one half that game, the second, and they’ve generally had one good half in all of their games...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MARQUETTE — Iron Mountain dominated the major 11-player awards given up out by the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association at its 75th annual football meeting last week. The Mountaineers finished 11-1 and advanced to the Division 8 regional final where it lost 14-7 to Beal City, which is playing Riverview Gabriel Richard for a state championship Friday morning. Iron Mountain was named Small School Team of the Year, with the retiring Robin Martilla Coach of the Year. Running back A...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MARQUETTE — Ontonagon’s dynamic duo of Austin Gordon and Caden Besonen was selected to the All-U.P. Dream Team at Monday’s 75th meeting of the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association. Gogebic’s Wyatt Aspinwall and Leland Hollenbeck were All-U.P. First Team selections while several area athletes were either special or honorable mention. Gordon, selected at one of two hybrid spots, finished his senior season with 2,394 passing yards and 27 touchdowns. He also ran for 387 yards and nine s...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MERCER, Wis. — Mercer seniors Eiley Schoeneman and Jenny Klopatek shared Player of the Year honors in the Northern Lights Conference in voting by coaches. Schoeneman and Klopatek were also honorable mention on the Wisconsin Volleyball Coaches Association Division 5 All-State team. Their teams were league and WIAA regional champions in all of their four years. “Eiley and Jenny are often paired together when talking about our success, but each of them brought their own contributions,” Mercer coach Robyn Sch...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] EWEN — The Ewen-Trout Creek girls keep adding hardware to the trophy case. And it’s not even basketball season yet. After winning their first U.P. cross country title last month, the Panthers won the MHSAA Division 4 District 97 volleyball title with a four-set win over Wakefield-Marenisco Thursday night. It was E-TC’s first district volleyball title since the MHSAA combined the U.P. and L.P. tournaments into one state tournament in 2000. While the Panthers were favored going into the U.P. cross count...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HOUGHTON — Ewen-Trout Creek couldn’t pull off two upsets in a row as the No. 2-ranked team in the Upper Peninsula, Hancock, ended their historic season with a 3-0 sweep of the Panthers in Tuesday night’s MHSAA Division 4 regional semifinal. The Bulldogs made the short drive over the Portage Lake Lift Bridge to Houghton High School and jumped on the Panthers for a 25-8, 25-10, 25-20 victory. Hancock’s schedule is as tough as anyone’s in the U.P. They are one of only two U.P. teams to take a set from big sc...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] CALUMET — Ironwood’s season has ended at the hands of some of the best volleyball teams in the Upper Peninsula recently. Last year, Forest Park made it to the Division 4 state semifinal while only losing two postseason sets along the way, with one of them coming against the Red Devils. This year, Calumet, which was ranked No. 1 in the U.P. poll all year, beat Ironwood 25-12, 25-15, 25-18 in Friday night’s MHSAA Division 3 District 65 final. The Copper Kings have won 18 district championships since the t...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] PAINESDALE — Ironwood had only won a single set in its two regular-season meetings with Jeffers. But in the Jets’ home gym, with a berth in the district final on the line, the Red Devils came up with their biggest victory of the season. The Red Devils won 25-23, 23-25, 24-26, 25-21, 15-11 in an exciting MHSAA Division 3 District 65 semifinal last week. “We were the underdog tonight,” Ironwood coach Lisa Fechter said. “They beat us twice. They were at least in the (U.P.) rankings sometimes in that Division...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HURLEY — Hurley seniors Gavin Moore and Devin Soltis were named to the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association All-Region team. The WFCA announced its all-region teams on Tuesday with 8-player honorees organized into two regions. The all-state teams will be announced Tuesday, Nov. 19. Hurley finished its first 8-player season at 7-2 and with two All-Region players. Soltis made it on both offense and defense — at running back and inside linebacker, “He had a great year for us, made a lot of plays defen...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Ironwood’s Aubrey Smith added another honor to her special senior season. The Division 2 U.P. champion was named to the All-U.P. Dream Team by the U.P. Cross Country Coaches Association after the season. Smith was the only D-2 runner on the seven-member Dream Team. She was joined on the team by U.P. Runner of the Year, Pickford’s Talya Schreiber, who won the D-3 title; two-time D-1 champion Tessa Rautiola of Houghton, who competed against Smith at many regular-season meets; Marquette’s Ella Fu...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MERCER, Wis. — Thursday night’s Mercer-Prentice sectional semifinal matchup lived up to the hype. Like the last two postseason meetings, it went all five sets. Unlike those two thrillers, though, Prentice came out on top, handing Mercer a heartbreaking 25-22, 21-25, 23-25, 25-20, 16-14 loss Thursday night. The top two players in the Northern Lights Conference, Jenny Klopatek and Eiley Schoeneman, played their final game. And their coach, Robyn Schoeneman, ended her varsity coaching career with 400 win...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — GCC hopes a grueling schedule to start the season will make them better the rest of the way. The Samsons start with a string of long-distance road trips — they played at downstate Petoskey over the weekend, head to Iowa Falls this weekend with trips to Milwaukee, Kansas and Escanaba before their home opener against Bay College on Nov. 26. One of those games is against defending national champion Hutchinson CC in Kansas, which was ranked No. 1 in the Division I preseason poll. They play Roc...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] Three players from Gogebic, two from Ontonagon and one from Ironwood were named to the Great Lakes Eight West all-conference First Team in voting by coaches after the regular season. Gogebic’s Bode Lynott earned the offensive hybrid spot with Wyatt Aspinwall at linebacker and Jayden Verrett in the defensive hybrid slot. Ontonagon’s Austin Gordon was selected at quarterback with teammate Caden Besonen chosen at wide receiver and defensive back (he was also a Second Team running back). Ironwood’s Evan Oja w...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HURLEY — Hurley’s Devin Soltis earned Offensive Player of the Year honors in the Northwoods East Conference in voting by coaches. Soltis led the Northstars with 1,379 yards on 172 carries and 18 touchdowns. He also caught 11 passes for 176 yards and three scores. He even threw for 298 yards with four touchdowns and four interceptions. Soltis also made the all-conference First Team on both offense and defense. Hurley lineman Gavin Moore also was named to the First Team on both sides of the ball. He finishe...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MERCER, Wis. - It took Mercer a little bit of time to get going Saturday night. But once they kicked it in gear, they were celebrating their ninth straight WIAA regional championship in a hurry. The No. 1 seeded Tigers rallied past No. 4 Mellen in the first set for a 25-18 win, won the next easily 25-8 and led the third 18-1 before closing it out for a 25-9 win. "This is our ninth one in a row, it feels amazing," Mercer senior Jenny Klopatek said. "We had...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] BESSEMER — Gogebic scored five straight touchdowns in the middle of the game to run away from Ironwood for a 50-12 win Friday night. The Miners beat their archrivals for the first time since they both became 8-player programs in 2021. Ironwood won the first three meetings, including a come-from-behind 34-30 win a year ago. “The kids had this marked on their calendar since last year,” Gogebic coach Nick Heikkila said. The Miners finished above .500 for the first time as an 8-player team and just misse...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MINONG, Wis. — Jared Schultz did it all for Northwood-Solon Springs Friday night. What he did right before half might have been the most impactful thing he did against Hurley on a night he had a hand all seven of their touchdowns. The Northstars fought back from a brutal first quarter where NSS took a 24-8 lead in the WIAA playoff opener. After a 34-yard touchdown pass from Jack Rowe to Devin Soltis with 13 seconds left, Hurley looked to enter halftime down by just one touchdown, 30-22, while getting the...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] IRONWOOD — Turnover in junior college sports happens pretty fast all the time. It still seems pretty sudden for the GCC Samsons this season as they enter a new year without two-year standout Jaden Borseth and last year’s star Eli Talsma. “I’m not sure what to expect from the 2024-25 version of Samson men’s basketball,” Gogebic coach Dennis Mackey said. “We return four guys and have 11 new players, so the learning curve is severe right now. Thus far, I like our athleticism and the attitudes our guys put...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] HURLEY — The home crowd roared as loud as it has all season as Hurley looked to get a stop and secure a win Friday night. When they got it, the two Northstars in on the sack jumped off the ground and led the enthusiastic celebration amongst the players. After the clock went to zero not too long after that, no player was more emotional than Brodie Erickson, because who else would know better than him how important a win that really was. The Northstars extended their remarkable run of playoff appearances t...
By MATT “SWEETS” MCCARTHY For The Globe POWERS — Despite an early touchdown that brought the game within a point, and four quarters of physical play, the third-ranked North Central Jets prevailed, as the Gogebic Miners dropped a Great Lakes Conference matchup 40-13 Friday night at North Central High School. After a Miners three-and-out on their opening possession of the contest, the Jets, who are two years removed from their third of three consecutive MHSAA 8-player Division 2 state championships, got into the end zone on their fourth play...
By JASON JUNO [email protected] MUNISING — Ironwood’s Aubrey Smith and the Ewen-Trout Creek girls lived up to expectations on Saturday as they became U.P. champions at the Upper Peninsula cross country finals at Pictured Rocks Golf Course. — — — Division 2 Smith had recorded the fastest time among the Division 2 runners during the regular season and she led the entire race Saturday, finishing in under 20 minutes with a time of 19:57, more than 25 seconds ahead of runner-up Ella Keranen of Hancock. There’s some pressure to being the f...
