The 2025 fall football Central Metropolitan Iowa League (CMIL) season this fall, looks as competitive as ever. The last 15 football Champions in Iowa in the largest class (4A until 2020. Iowa added a new 5A in 2021) have all been from the CIML. Dowling, Valley, Ankeny, and Southeast Polk have all had state championships over those 15 years, and have also dominated the upper division CIML standings each year.
It will be interesting to see if those four schools will be the top four CMIL schools again this fall. One school that has the potential to rise is the Northwest Waukee Wolves. The Wolves have only been a school for a few years since the Waukee School District split into two schools. So, everything Wolves is relatively new, and it normally takes time to build a football program.
This fall, the Northwest Wolves Football program got some unexpected roster help from North of the Border in Minnesota when Dalton DeBoer announced he is moving to Waukee to finish his senior season and play football for the Wolves. Dalton has recently committed to play at Wake Forest in the ACC starting in 2026, and he committed to the Demon Deacons over a host of schools, including the Purdue Boilermakers
I have had a chance to meet and get to know Dalton and his parents over the past 18 months as Dalton was playing basketball with the Martin Brothers 2026 AAU team out of Cedar Falls. When they came down to the south to play in South Carolina and Georgia we would drive over from Atlanta to see our nephew who plays on the same team.
I thought featuring Dalton and the DeBoer family’s move to Waukee would be a fun story for our readers. Dalton is a 6’6”. 330lbs offensive lineman and should be a welcome addition to the wolves this fall.
So, I asked some questions that Dalton was kind enough to answer below on the move and what excites him for his first CIML Fall Football season.
Q. Why did you choose Waukee Northwest Football for your senior year?
A. “My family and I had been considering moving to a new school in-state in Minnesota or out of state. We had close friends in Des Moines, so we were either going to move somewhere in Minnesota or Des Moines.
I was to be able to play for Martin Brothers basketball and made a great group of friends through AAU basketball the past two years. I met Colin Rice and Mac Heitland both Northwest Waukee student athletes, and I learned a lot about what Northwest had to offer. I’m really excited to experience the student and community support. I’m looking forward to the Friday night lights and a true high school football experience. When I spoke with college coaches, they were really supportive of the move. They said it gives me the experience of moving away from home to a new environment and learning how to gel with a new team quickly.”
Q. I asked the same question of Dalton’s parents to get their perspective on the move.
A. “We are really thankful for Dalton’s education thus far. We decided to visit Northwest and met with advisors and coaches. It just seemed like the perfect fit. They run a college style offense and program that will put Dalton in the best position to succeed at Wake Forest.
In addition, we really liked the block schedule at Northwest. We think it will help Dalton with time management and understanding the pace of learning at college. At the end of the day, our family is blessed. We have a son who excels academically and athletically. By balancing both, he has a great opportunity ahead of him at Wake Forest. In addition, we are blessed by a school, community and football program that has accepted him with open arms. We have always said God puts you where you’re meant to be.”
It is clear that Academics are extremely important to the DeBoer family. Their family toured and focused on top academic schools, and Dalton was offered by Yale, Cornell, Purdue, Brown, Tulane, and a long list of top academic schools. I can share from living many years in the South, that Wake Forest, Duke, Georgia Tech, Tulane, Rice, and Vanderbilt are the Stanford’s of the South.
I am not exactly an unbiased writer in this case, since I have gotten to know the family and Dalton, but I will share the reasons I believe this move makes sense from an observer perspective. The two reasons-
- Moving Now helps get Dalton ready for a much bigger move to Winston Salem, North Carolina next year.
The logic to me is that the “shock” of going to college in 2026 should be less. New City, New Team, starting over, and meeting a whole set of teammates will be more been there-done that….Dalton will repeat the big move he did this year just on a bigger stage. The 2025 senior season is a rehearsal year for Dalton, before the big show next year at a Power 4 Division One Program.
This type of move is common for top high school basketball players. The 2025 top ranked high school players in Nebraska (out of Kearney NE) and Wisconsin (Oregon WI) are both moving to prep schools to play this winter to prepare for college and playing at the highest level. Or course, you feel bad for the Kearney Nebraska coach and fans, but I understand the why? Going from Kearney to playing for Florida, UCLA, etc. should be easier after playing for a top prep school for a year on the West Coast. Also, as Dalton shared above, it appears his college coaches at Wake Forest greenlit and encouraged the move.
2. Prepare for college by upping the competition level in 2025
I watched a fair amount of Hudl tape of Dalton’s junior and sophomore years at Minneapolis Academy of Holy Angels, and that program has runs a veer, flexbone type offense. It is a smaller school with about 150 kids a class, and they faced many smaller-sized defensive lineman opponents. The only FCS College teams using a flexbone veer type, run heavy offense in college are Navy, Army, and Air Force. The CIML is a higher level of competition in terms of size of the defensive lineman and competition level. Also, as bonus the CIML and Northwest run college-type offenses primarily.
Dalton Deboer is not alone in big CIML football transfer news, as we shared earlier this week on the Jeffrey Roberts move to Dowling.
Ames Football Star Jeffrey Roberts transfers to Dowling Catholic – SportsGuysIowa
It should be fun fall season to see Dalton and the Wolves compete in the always rugged CIML. We will be starting our in-depth previews of CIML teams over the next few weeks which we hope you will enjoy.
P.S. the NW Wolves have some firepower coming back, Isiah Oliver and Mac Heitland just to name two of the key returnees, and we will take a deep dive into all the CIML teams – the Maroons, Rams, Hawks, Jaguars, and more.
As always, we appreciate your support and comments.
