Charles City cancels season for girls varsity basketball team

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Last girls high school basketball season, the Charles City Comets were for a brief moment “undefeated”.

They had bested Waterloo East in a season-opener thriller (54-52) before finishing the season 2-20 with a subsequent 1-point victory over North Butler (41-40), the same team the Comets had defeated the season before to break a 36-game losing streak that spanned multiple seasons.

The Comets are assured not to lose a single varsity girls basketball game this forthcoming season as the school has announced it will not play a girls varsity schedule this year due to low numbers and lack of experience.

The school district currently has scheduled girls junior varsity-level contests with a season-opener at Waterloo East on Nov. 23, as well as junior high school games with the Comets seventh- and eighth-grade girls teams both due to open the season Monday (Nov. 11) at Sumner-Fredericksburg.

The girls high school program was formerly led by former Comet standout Dave Rottinghaus and veteran teacher and coach Rusty Rogotzke, who took over the program at the start of the 2022-23 season, filling a coaching vacancy in the 11th hour just before preseason practices began.

They both stepped down when Rottinghaus took over Charles City’s boys basketball team after former Comet coach Ben Klapperich accepted the athletic director position at Clear Lake High School.

Before leaving the girls program, Rottinghaus helped appoint teacher/coach Luke Anderson to run a middle school girls program with Sue Hoefer taking over as the girls varsity head coach on an interim basis.

The idea was to have Anderson eventually move up with the girls he’s coaching and instructing while taking over the high school program from Hoefer, who also coaches the Comets’ volleyball team, which recently won the final Northeast Iowa Conference regular-season title before advancing as far as the regional championship match.

The last time Charles City had a basketball team — boys or girls — advance to the State Championship was 2004 when the Comet girls team lost to Waukon in the Class 3A final.

Though Charles City hasn’t been back to state in two decades and counting, the school has been graced with several outstanding female athletes, some of whom have continued their athletic careers at the NCAA Division I level and excelled at basketball as junior high and underclass players, but decided for various reasons — i.e. recover from injuries … avoid injuries … concentrate on other sports — not to further pursue their basketball careers.

Charles City is not the only local school district to have recently canceled its girls varsity basketball season. Two seasons ago, Rockford canceled its varsity season due to lack of numbers and experience.