On Sundays, we are launching a new feature that highlights all our articles for the week in one place for easy reading.

For many years the state’s flagship newspaper printed a Sunday sports section called the Big Peach printed on Peach Colored paper. For those of our readers who are now in the 40+ age “seasoned readers” category, that run to the front porch to get the sports section and arguing over who reads it first was fun. Randy Petersen, Mark Hansen….the list of great Des Moines Register “Big Peach” writers was long.

So, we thought it would be great to share our weekly column on Sundays (we will publish early on Sunday every week) our top articles on Small Iowa College and Universities and Iowa High School Sports for the week in homage to the Big Peach.

The added bonus of the Peach theme, is our family just moved back to Iowa from Atlanta last year, and there is nothing as tasty as a Georgia Peach.

A big thank you all our readers as the first few week plus of @Sportsguysiowa have been so much fun. The response has been outstanding (with 5,000+ readers in our first 7+ days of publishing which we thought might take a year of publishing to reach).

Our top stories of the week (in read article ranking – please just click on the link to read)

1. Colin Rice – Northwest Waukee Basketball Star commits to the Nebraska Cornhuskers – In the full disclosure category – Colin is related by blood to many on our Sportguysiowa team, so that helped this article fly to #1. Plus, it did not hurt that a lot of big schools like the Hawks were pursuing him. So, many of us on the SGI team are Husker BB fans now, and will be getting used to wearing Husker red gear during the BB season.
2. Clean Slate for Fort Madison Bloodhound Football in 2025 – This is great story from Brandon Leonard @blenny10 on X on a program that is coming off a tough high school football season in 2024. The enthusiasm and can-do attitude of the coaching staff really will make you a Bloodhound fan for 2025 after you read their story
3. Upper Iowa Peacocks picked #3 in their preseason Conference Rankings – Iowa’s Only D2 Football Program has been building and building in Division 2. Coming off their best year since moving to D2 in 2003 makes following the Peacocks from Elkader exciting. They have 50 former Iowa High School Players on their roster which is awesome to see. What the Staff and School has worked so hard to build has taken 20+ years of work and we will be following them closely in 2025.
4. Waukee Warriors 2025 Football Preview – Are they poised for a 5A playoff run and more this fall? A big thanks to Coach Bakker for the preview on the Waukee Warriors football season. He went in great detail on the young men who are going to star for the Warriors this fall and his excellent staff. 5A Football schedules for Des Moines area teams are very challenging and the Warriors look up to the challenge.
5. Waukee Northwest Football Preview 2025 – This story was our 5th best read (Sorry Wolves fans but your cross-town rivals, the Waukee Warriors, just nipped you by a few readers). Coach Corey Kopatich shared some great details on his squad for the fall and on his coaching staff. The wolves look poised for a breakthrough with a strong QB, A Lineman who transferred in from Minnesota who is committed to Wake Forest, and a pack of other hungry and experienced Wolves.

Just out of the top 5 Articles this week

Coe College announces the addition of Women’s Wrestling – This story would likely have been number one if we were in wrestling season. Coe College joins Central, Wartburg, Luther, Cornell, BV, Simpson, Upper Iowa, Grandview and more, adding women’s wrestling as sport. The NCAA is going to have their first D1, D2, and D3 women’s wrestling championships next spring in 2026.

Graceland Football some big news from a NAIA Iowa program on the rise – This was just published yesterday as Graceland made an immediate change in Head Coach for 2025. Coach Ross is moving into the Administration side at Graceland and Coach Staback takes over. We will be writing in-depth preview articles on all the Iowa Small College and Universities before opening day, but this story could not wait.

If you haven’t been following the gentlemen from Lamoni the past few years, this staff and players are one of those “Phoenix of Football” stories. They have risen from the ashes…The Yellow Jackets last 20+ straight games over the three years, before Coach Ross became Head Coach in 2022.

Graceland football has gone 4-7 (2022), 6-5 (2023) and 7-4 (2024) in arguably the toughest NAIA football conference in the US, the HAAC (home to the defending NAIA Champions from Des Moines – Grandview University). This program is going to be fun to watch this fall.

What does Luther College’s move to the Midwest Conference in 2026 mean for the Norse? This was published our first week, but still ranked in the top 10 for last week. Our opinion on the upcoming Luther Norse move to join Iowa Schools – Cornell and Grinnell in 2026. We think it might be the best move and decision for the Norse since the invention of the longboat.

Dowling Catholic Football 2025 Preview – This is another article published in our first week, but still ranked in our top 10. A big thanks to Coach Wilson for his preview on the always great chance to win the 5A title Maroons for 2025.

Opinion: Cornell Takes Page From Rival Kohawks Playbook – This article would have likely been our Number One “Medium Peach” article if is had not been published in our first week. Brandon Leonard’s Article on Cornell College naming Iowa High School Hall of Famer Curt Ritchie as head coach of Ram Football. P.S. you will be able to see that many of our SGI team are former Coe College athletes in this article. We promise to work on that failing, and be as unbiased as possible towards the Rams this fall. We promise to try!

We wanted to thank you again for reading and all the volunteers who have reached out to us to help. We are crowdsourcing our coverage (as we all have day jobs and doing this for fun) to give more coverage to Iowa High School and Iowa Small College and University athletes.

If you would like to join our team and contribute content for your favorite squad, please reach out to us on X with a message @sportsguysiowa or at my email below. Or please share our work on X as we appreciate the growing number of followers of our daily content.

As always, we thank you for the comments and support.