September 5, 2018 at 2:28 p.m.
Hodag girls 5th, boys 6th at Charger Invite
Hodag girls 5th, boys 6th at Charger Invite
After waiting out a nearby thunderstorm, the teams finally got on the course and the Rhinelander High School cross country team earned a fifth-place finish in the girls' division and a sixth-place finish in the boys' division of a 12-school race.
When the storms cleared, the Hodags had four runners medal in the event by placing in the top 30 overall - Bridger Flory and Jacob Weddle on the boys' side, and Abbie Henrichs and Alison DeNamur on the girls' side.
"We're making progress," Hodag coach M.J. Laggis said. "We've got a lot of young kids in there plugging away."
Flory had the best individual finish for the Hodags, placing third overall in the boys' race with a time of 18 minutes, 33.28 seconds. That was roughly 45 seconds behind race winner Adam Rzentkowski of Rosholt and 18 seconds behind runner-up Riley Volkman of Seymour.
Sophomore Jacob Weddle was second across for the Hodags in 23rd overall (20:45.75). JC Adams was 39th (21:48.76). Daniel Ritchie, in his first race of the season after devoting most of his time to soccer so far this fall, was 40th (21:49.66). Junior Levi Smith (47th, 22:07.68), freshman Jaden Beske (51st, 22:21.47) and freshman Cal Laggis (52nd, 22:42.58) rounded out the Hodag varsity.
"Bridger had a really good race and finished really strong. That was really good.," coach Laggis said. "Then we have a bunch of young kids, freshman and sophomore types, that are top seven, scoring and improving. That's really, really encouraging."
Henrichs and DeNamur just snuck into the medal positions on the girls' side, placing 29th and 30th, respectively. Henrichs finished the 5-kilometer course in 25:18.78 while DeNamur's time was 25:28.82.
The rest of the Hodag varsity wasn't far behind. Sage Flory finished 34th (25:58.91), Emma Germain was 37th (26:07.62), Audrey Schiek was 40th (26:21.06), Jenna Younker was 48th (27:06.86) and Liana Teter was 52nd (27:25.73).
Youth showed through again for the Hodag girls' in Tuesday's race. Rhinelander's top seven was comprised of two sophomores (Henrichs and DeNamur), four freshmen (Flory, Germain, Schiek and Teter) and a junior (Younker).
"There's a whole big pool of girls there that are just loving it, working hard and really improving," Laggis said. "I think you're going to see some names start to surface here down the road that you haven't heard before."
Another positive sign, according to Laggis, was the relatively small gap between his varsity runners. The top five Rhinelander girls were separated by just more than a minute. After Bridger Flory, the final six finishers for the Hodag boys came in less than two minutes apart.
"Last year we always talked about trying to get a pool of (runners) together and I think we're close to having that on both the boys' and girls' sides," Laggis said. "We've got to get them through faster, and that's coming. They're doing a good body of work in practice and I think they're going to keep improving."
Tuesday's meet was supposed to start at 4 p.m., but lightning in the vacinity pushed the race start back to 4:50 p.m. and forced the boys' and girls' races to be combined, with the girls starting five minutes after the boys.
"The conditions were difficult to say the least," Laggis said. "It was controlled chaos and everyone trying to get ready to go."
The Hodags have picked up a race on their calendar this coming Tuesday at Stratford. This meet replaced the Aug. 28 Mosinee Invite, which was canceled due to heavy rain.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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