March 29, 2024

Baxter, C-M join forces on pitch

Starting in the spring of 2020, Colfax-Mingo and Baxter will be part of a newly formed high school soccer program.

The two Jasper County schools will join with Collins-Maxwell, West Marshall, Colo-NESCO to form Central Iowa United.

The United will compete in Class 3A in both boys and girls and the colors will be black, Vegas gold and white.

“This will be a huge benefit to all athletes and will give them an identity that everyone will feel part of a team,” Baxter Activities Director Lori Fricke said.

The Baxter Bolts were recently part of a soccer program featuring Collins-Maxwell, Baxter, Colo-NESCO and West Marshall. The program was ran through Collins-Maxwell. The matches and practices were in Maxwell.

The new program will continue to play matches in Maxwell, but the practices will take place in Baxter.

“Practices being held at Baxter will be beneficial for all schools since we are centrally located, and it will reduce bus times for everyone and allows for additional practice time,” Fricke said.

Colfax-Mingo joins the group this upcoming season after a sharing agreement with Prairie City-Monroe ended this offseason.

PCM decided to make changes to their programs on its end, and that forced Colfax-Mingo to find another place to play soccer.

“We have a lot of interest in soccer,” Colfax-Mingo Activities Director Erin Hume said. “PCM wanted to make changes on their side so it would have left us without a soccer program. We had to do someting in order to make sure there was somewhere for our kids to go. At that same time, both Baxter and West Marshall were exploring options, too.

“We started talking about options and this just fell together eventually.”

Fricke said conversations about the direction of the soccer programs began this summer. The idea of five schools sharing one team had to go through all five school boards before it could become official.

The idea behind the neutral name of Central Iowa United is to begin a foundation of equality between the five schools. Not one school means more to the program than the others.

“We didn’t put a name on it because there were so many teams together, we didn’t think it was fair to any of the schools involved,” Hume said.

Both boys’ and girls’ programs for Central Iowa United are without coaching staffs. Fricke said the process of hiring new coaches has begun. Hume and Fricke both said all five schools will have a say in who the coaches are.

“This has been something we have been talking about since the summer,” Fricke said. “It is a huge relief for all of us to have a resolution that benefits so many athletes in such a positive way. It has been a privilege working with the other ADs and administrators from all the schools involved and coming to a resolution that is a positive solution for the kids.”

All five schools were part of a Class 2A soccer program the past few years. The Central Iowa United will start out in 3A and could play teams from the Des Moines metro area.

To the gridiron, my San Francisco 49ers are the real deal. The crazy 48-46 win over the New Orleans Saints puts the 49ers back into first place in the NFC just one year after finishing 4-12 and picking second in the NFL Draft.

The back-and-forth game against the Saints felt like a playoff battle. It might be a preview of the NFC Championship game later this year.

George Kittle, a former Iowa Hawkeye, is the best 49ers’ best player. He turned a 3-yard catch on 4th and 2 into a big gain, and that led to the game-winning field goal.

Kittle was being pulled by the facemask at the end of the play refused to go down. He’s a winner and the 49ers are winning because he sets the tone for that franchise every day.

The final three weeks of the NFL season should be fun. The Niners still have to play the Seahawks one more time, the Packers and Vikings still have to play again and the Patriots and Bills will meet for a second time soon.

All those matchups will factor into the postseason. Hopefully my 49ers are left standing when all is said and done.

Contact Troy Hyde at thyde@newtondailynews.com