COLUMN: Rising in the fall

     Some notes and shout-outs from Monticello’s amazing run of postseason fall sports success last week:

     • The Monticello football cheerleaders do jumping jacks and count them off after each Panther touchdown, so they were kept busy with the home team’s eight touchdowns and 56 total points Friday night in the opening playoff win.

     So you might think, 56 jumping jacks? What’s the big deal? Uh-uh. They did 56 after the last touchdown. Prior to that they did 49, 42, 35….etc. The grand total was 252 jumping jacks. I doubt they minded.

     • Also, a shout-out to kicker Christian Castillo and his holder, Tate Petersen, as they went 8-for-8 on extra point attempts Friday. These are not as automatic at the high school level as one might think, but Castillo has been extremely solid all season, going 29-for-31.

     • I have no doubt the Panthers’ close volleyball matches this season contributed to the team’s five-set victory at Anamosa Oct. 13.

     The tone might have been set in a Sept. 15 match at Cascade, which went to a fifth set before Monticello edged the Cougars 15-13 to win the match.

     Last Tuesday, in a match that decided whether the Panthers would win an outright division championship, the Panthers overcame Anamosa 15-9 in the fifth set to win the match.

     • Monticello has a cross country tradition of saving its best for last, and that was evidenced in the River Valley Conference Meet, where the Panther boys won their first conference crown since 2015, and the girls had an impressive third place finish.

     Three Panther boys and five girls had personal records in the meet, as they gear up for hosting the state qualifying meet Wednesday.

     • I have had this conversation with many people this fall. But I people find it amazing that despite a few blips on the radar, the fall sports season, here and throughout the state, has been able to continue and might just make it to the final state competition venues.

     It might have been hard, prior to the first kickoff, volleyball whistle or cross country gun, to find anyone who thought the season would make it past mid-September, let alone late October.

     This is why most teams, at least around here, conducted their Senior Nights the first chance they could, in case the seasons got cut short.

     That we’re still going might be the biggest success story of them all.