Best Way to Celebrate Senior Night? A Conference Championship

KEOTA—On February 6, the Keota Eagles boys’ basketball team hosted the Sigourney Savages for a battle of the SK teams. The Eagles soared to a 75-23 victory behind 18 points from seniors Sawyer Stout and Evan Vittetoe. The Eagles completed the perfect regular season, and were crowned the South Iowa Cedar League champions. This marked the first SICL title for the Eagles since the 2020-2021 season, where they split the title with the Montezuma Braves.

Before the game, the Eagles celebrated the careers of seniors Tanner Waterhouse, Evan Vittetoe, Connor Strand, Sawyer Stout, Aiden McGuire, Chase Sieren, Carson McDonald and Cole Kindred.

The Eagles stormed out to a 33-14 halftime lead behind 13 points from senior Sawyer Stout. The third quarter was the Evan Vittetoe show, as the Keota center scored 10 of the Eagles 23 third quarter points.

The Eagles cruised in the fourth quarter en route to the 75-23 victory.

Keota junior Billie Kindred finished with an impressive stat line of 14 points, 16 rebounds, six assists, four steals and a block.

After the game, seniors Evan Vittetoe, Cole Kindred, Tanner Waterhouse and Sawyer Stout spoke on being crowned the conference champions on their senior night.

Evan Vittetoe, a captain on the team, started with, “It means a lot. We worked really hard to get this, along with all the time in little league or junior high. Just means a lot to win it out-right too.”

Fellow captain Cole Kindred followed up with, “It feels great because last year we were one game away from winning it. Our sophomore season wasn’t the best, so it just feels great to win it finally.”

Tanner Waterhouse shared a similar sentiment to Vittetoe and Kindred with, “It feels amazing to win that conference championship. Us going undefeated throughout the season feels amazing even though the past couple years haven’t been too good.”

The last of the three captains of the Eagles, Sawyer Stout, described his experience with, “It feels terrific to win this. We have put so much effort into this sport. I know Cole (Kindred, Billie (Kindred), Tanner (Waterhouse) and myself have worked on our shots for thousands of hours. Five hundred shots a day, everyday, out of most of us. It feels so great. We were one game shy of it last year with the loss to Lynnville-Sully. To get them back this year, and win the conference. Everytime we walk into the gym, like Coach Stout said, you can see it says ‘2024 SICL Champs.’ We are the undisputed SICL champs, and that is great thing to say.”

The idea of enacting revenge for last year did not end with defeating Lynnville-Sully for a conference championship. The Eagles drew a number one seed in the Substate 6: District 11 tournament. Coincidence enough, Gladbrook-Reinbeck is the number two seed. The same Gladbrook-Reinbeck team that eliminated the Eagles last year.

Captain Sawyer Stout spoke on how the team made note of this as soon as the brackets were released. “The first thing that was sent in our group chat was, ‘revenge game.’ So you know how much it means to all of us. They have a really good squad over there, but we understand the magnitude of that game, so we are really going to come hungry,” explained Stout.

Before the season, Keota Head Coach Dan Stout described that the first goal was to win the conference. Coach Stout spoke on accomplishing this goal with, “It all starts as a process. These guys started as sophomore, and we took some bumps and bruises. We got better the next year. Hard work and dedication pay off and that is attributed to what these kids have done. I am really proud of what they have done. We said we wanted to win the east, we did that. We said we wanted to win the conference, we did that. Now our next goal is making the state tournament.” 

It was an unusual pregame for Coach Stout that he described with, “I haven’t been very nervous for many games this year, but I had them tonight. I had the nerves because you never know in this game. Throw out the record book, when these two teams play each other. Sigourney has been playing great basketball these past 10 games. They were 9-1 in their last two games. We knew much they had improved since we first played them. I think our kids were so locked in coming into this game that they weren’t going to let this slip through their hands. They knew they had 32 minutes to go out there and win a conference championship, and they did just that.”

The Eagles cap off a spectacular regular season of play with a perfect record of 20-0, and earned the #1 seed in the SubState 6: District 11 bracket. They will face the winner of the English Valleys and Meskwaki Settlement play-in game.