Rounding up a series of local towns’ Fire Prevention Week, was Lonsdale Fire Department’s Fire Safety Night, which was held in coordination with Tri-City United Early Childhood Education.
    This event, which has happened for many years, gave an opportunity for the younger children to explore all of the fire equipment and apparatus the department has, meet real firefighters, get a cool vacuum-formed fire hat, fire safety-related coloring books, have some refreshments, and listen to a presentation by Fire Safety Officer Adam Vycital of the Lonsdale Fire Department.

    Tri-City United High School’s band and choir hosted the first concert of the 2026-2027 school year on Monday evening, Oct. 19 in the school’s performing arts center.
    It was the first out-of-college concert directing a choir for Lydia Horan, the new high school and grades 5-8 choir director. Horan, as noted in a previous Messenger, graduated this spring from Concordia College in Moorhead.
    Both band and choir have a solid showing in numbers of students this year.

Titans volleyball face tough competition at tournament

    The Tri-City United (TCU) volleyball team held their own in a very good tournament Friday and Saturday at Eastview and Burnsville High Schools.
    The Titans defeated two 4A schools and were defeated in three other matches, with two of those three schools having a much larger enrollment.
    TCU defeated Owatonna (2-1) and Burnsville (2-1), lost to Chatfield (1-2), and were swept by Cretin-Derham Hall  and Woodbury

    The button design of nine-year-old Alena Dietz of Tri-City United Lonsdale PreK-6 School was chosen to be on this year’s Torchlight Parade & Fireworks buttons.
    Any student in fourth grade throughout the Tri-City United School District area, including private schools, home schoolers, and alternative learning programs, had the opportunity to submit a design through Sept. 16, 2026.
    Dietz’s design may be the most colorful design chosen as a winner. She said she found out about being chosen as the winner the morning of Friday, Oct. 9 

    Fireworks popped across the night sky during halftime at Tri-City United’s homecoming football game Friday evening, but the excitement of the evening didn’t stop there.
    The Titans pulled off a 14-12 win over Waseca, bolstered by key defensive plays—one forcing a touchdown and one preventing a score. See sports for game details.
    The victory capped a week of activities for homecoming, beginning the evening of Monday, Sept. 28, with coronation.

    With a four match winning streak in tact, the Tri-City United (TCU) volleyball team continues to sit atop the Big South Conference Black Division standings.
    The Titans defeated St. Peter (26-28, 25-20, 25-22, 25-19) Tuesday, Sept. 29 and Holy Family (25-15, 25-20, 25-19) Thursday, Oct. 1 to improve to 4-0 in the conference and 14-3 overall.

    In one of their biggest wins in school history, the Tri-City United football team defeated Class AAA 3rd rated Waseca, 14-12, in their annual Homecoming game Friday, Oct. 2 in Montgomery.
    Waseca came into the game undefeated and was the defending Section 3AA Champion. They defeated the Titans twice last season (49-6, 21-0) and finished as the Class AAA State Runners-up, losing to Annandale, 17-7, in the championship.

    Residents of the Montgomery area gathered at the Revival on Main in Montgomery on Tuesday, Sept. 22 to hear from their local representatives at a Meet Your Candidates event put together by community member Jean Keogh.

    Social media posting on Facebook has been all abuzz the last couple weeks about the roundabout in Lonsdale at Highway 19 and Rice County 2, which was completed less than two months ago. 
    The subject of the chatter is a large dip on the northeast corner of the roundabout that developed that is about four-to-six inches deep, about four-to-six inches from side-to-side and extends the width of the lane.

    The Tri-City United (TCU) girls swimming and diving team nearly upset Mankato West in a dual meet Tuesday, Sep. 15 at West.
    The Titans won five events (three individual and two relays) against the Scarlets in an 86-83 win by West.
    “TCU’s relays and backstroke showed strong team chemistry heading into the rest of the season,” head coach Cassie Fisher said.
    Winning individual events were Madelyn Ryan in the 500-yard freestyle (7:31), Isla Stock in the 100-yard backstroke (1:16.31), and Grace Harmeyer in the 100-yard breaststroke (1:35.24).

Titans boys soccer finish half of season 7-0-1

    With two more wins, the Tri-City United (TCU) boys soccer team finishes the first half of their 2026 season with seven wins, no losses, and one tie.
    The Titans moved up to 8th in the Class A State Soccer Poll after wins against Waseca, 4-1, on Tuesday, Sept. 15 and Fairmont, 4-0, Thursday, Sept. 17.

    The Titans will “(Re)Discover” the ’90s for homecoming next week. Rebecca Wiseman, homecoming advisor and high school teacher, put together a fun set of days for students to celebrate, which were announced Monday, Sept. 21 to students during the unveiling in the high school performing arts center during advisory time.

TCU tennis team claims six titles at New Ulm

    The results from the new Ulm girls tennis invitational Saturday, Sept. 12 probably couldn’t have gone any better for the Tri-City United (TCU) squad.
    Of the 24 matches played against New Ulm, Redwood Valley, and River Valley, The Titans won 21 of them. 

    In addition to those in the photograph with names, this list of classmates and their information was provided.

    A 911 call on Friday, Sept. 2, at MGM Apartments in Lonsdale, 321 Southeast 1st Avenue,  is a suspected suicide. 
    Lonsdale Police Chief Jason Schmitz said that a call came in at 12:09 p.m. for a welfare check by the person’s employer after they had not showed up to work the last three days.

    Meghan Bastyr has had multiple jobs over her time here on Earth, including being a mom, a heavy equipment operator, farmer, and more. She went to college to be a nurse, but that isn’t what she went straight into out of college.
    After graduating nursing school in 2008, she worked with her father Rick Renslow, who was also a late-1980’s World Wrestling Federation pro wrestler, in a landscaping business building boulder walls on lake shorelines. That ended when her father passed away in 2008.