December 27, 2019 at 11:36 a.m.
RHS football team's turnaround season named top local sports story of 2019
RHS football team's turnaround season named top local sports story of 2019
That backdrop is necessary to underscore exactly what the Rhinelander High School football team accomplished in 2019.
With offensive coordinator Aaron Kraemer elevated to the head coaching position, the Hodags went on to make a remarkable turnaround this season. Rhinelander went 6-4 - the team's first winning season since 1994 - and reached the WIAA playoffs for only the third time in school history. Along the way, the Hodags got off to their first 4-0 start since 1974 and defeated Antigo in the Bell Game for the first time since 2006.
The Hodags' magical run landed them on the top of The Northwoods River News' list of top local sport stories of 2019, as selected by sports editor Jeremy Mayo.
If Rhinelander High School athletics enjoy a renaissance in the next decade, 2019 will be looked back on as the year it all began. In addition to the Hodag football team, the RHS boys' swim, girls' swim, girls' basketball and boys' track teams reached heights they had not seen in decades - or ever. What's more, 2019 marked a major investment into the district's sports facilities, that will be capped off by the construction of an air-supported indoor sports facility that is scheduled to be completed by August of next year.
But, for 2019, rare success for the RHS football team stood out above everything else.
"It's really, really special to get back to the playoffs for our program, to set ourselves up for the younger kids to move in the right direction moving forward and just to do the right things and show that we are a program that isn't just a varsity football team, but a program of kids that's going to come together, a community people that's going to come together and rally around football," Kraemer said after the Hodags clinched their spot in the playoffs with a 16-12 win at Ashland in the final week of the regular season.
Kraemer, an in-house candidate, beat out four other finalists for the head coaching position in a search that lasted just over four months after the district essentially demoted Ferge, who would continue teaching within the district and eventually settle in as the football program's JV2 head coach.
Immediately after Kraemer was named head coach in early April, players bought into to his concept of changing the culture and doing uncommon things to achieve uncommon results. The Hodags' first offensive snap of the season was a sign of things to come. Junior quarterback Quinn Lamers hit junior wide receiver Jackson Labs in stride for a 50-yard touchdown on play action. The Hodags went on to defeat Prescott 21-0 and the momentum kept building.
Rhinelander followed with a 48-6 steamrolling of Tomahawk six days later, beat Lakeland 25-13 to reclaim the Northwoods Axe and then downed previously unbeaten Wausau East 31-13 to move to 4-0 on the season.
"That's what I think is the difference right now. Our kids are having fun and enjoying football again," Kraemer said following the Wausau East win, which drew attention of football observers around the state. Kraemer was named the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association/Green Bay Packers coach of the week and the Hodags checked in at No. 10 in the WisSports.net/WFCA Division 3 coaches poll.
The Hodags were outclassed the following week by a strong Medford team that ended up winning the GNC and advancing to Level 3 of the WIAA playoffs, but bounced back at home with a 20-10 victory over Antigo in the Bell Game which, coincidentally, was named the River News' top game of 2019 (see related story, page 12).
Rhinelander dealt with adversity down the stretch. It lost standout tackle Alex Olson to an elbow injury in the Bell Game and star running back Drake Martin sustained an ankle injury a week later at Mosinee that would hamper the Hodag offense the rest of the season. Rhinelander could not hold on to 13-point leads against Mosinee or Merrill - dropping the former by a point and the latter in overtime - to fall to 5-3 on the season and set up a must-win game in the regular season finale at Ashland.
The Hodags held off a late Oredocker push to secure a four-point win and make the playoffs, where they lost to River Falls in Level 1.
What will be intriguing to see is if this year's success was a one-year wonder, or the start of better things for the Hodag football program.
"We had one great season. One great season does not build a program," Kraemer told the team during its year-end banquet. "The blueprint these young men have left for you is something we can build on and we can show where (the) legacy (of this year's team) will lay."
The rest of the top 10:
2. SDR, community pledge millions in facilities upgrades
While the Hodag football team's resurgence was the No. 1 story of the year, the second most important story literally took place right under its feet.
The Hodags played on a new, artificial turf surface at Mike Webster Stadium this fall. It was the result of a school board meeting in mid-June where the district and private donors pledged roughly $7.5 million toward facility upgrades.
Of that total, $573,000 went toward ripping out the natural grass surface at Mike Webster which had a myriad of drainage issues after a track reconfiguration allowed for soccer to be played at the stadium as well. Poor turf conditions moved several RHS boys' soccer games and subvarsity football games to the soccer fields in front of the high school, as well as the majority of RHS girls' soccer games this past spring.
Crews made quick work of the project, getting the field done by Labor Day weekend, when it was christened by the RHS boys' soccer team in a tournament. The Hodag football team played its first game on the new turf six days later, beating Lakeland 25-13.
The grander part of the project was the approval of the district to spend up to $5.7 million for the construction of an air-supported dome that will be able to house several different outdoor sports - including football, soccer, softball, track, tennis and more - during times of inclement weather.
In addition to the district's pledge, the Hodag Facilities Foundation pledged at least $1.2 million to the project, headlined by a $500,000 donation from the Dr. Lee Swank family.
"Personally, I'm going to lay it on the table, I'm sold on the dome," RHS activities director Brian Paulson said during a June 27 meeting in which the board of education chose an air-supported dome over a smaller, steel structure.
Added RHS softball coach D.J. DeMeyer at the same meeting, "This would be a real game changer for this town."
3. Hodag swim teams return to greatness
Just as the RHS football team turned back the clock in 2019 to celebrate its most successful season in a quarter century, the RHS boys' and girls' swim teams did the same - and experienced great results at the state level.
To rank one of the swim team's accomplishments ahead of the other would be unfair, as both are intertwined in a year that saw Rhinelander win individual state titles in both boys' and girls' swimming in the same year for the first time since 1994.
The boys' squad had the limelight in February as it capped off a successful season by setting four school records in Madison and finishing in third place overall in the Division 2 standings.
The highlights of the night came in the second half of the meet. The quartet of Joseph Heck, Nolan Francis, Devon Gaber and Russell Benoy took the 200-yard freestyle relay in a time of 1 minute, 27.76 seconds in Rhinelander's first individual state title since the Hodags won three events at the 1994 state meet. Minutes later, Francis added another state title with a win in the 100 backstroke.
"It's a great privilege, a very great privilege," Francis said afterward. "All of these guys worked really hard this season. We all had positive attitudes and we all deserved this win. I'm very proud of these guys."
Francis added a runner-up finish in the 100 butterfly and the Hodags were second in the 200 medley relay with the team of Thaddeus Heck, Francis, David King and Benoy.
The Hodags won conference and sectional titles ahead of their massive swim at the state meet. The same held true for the RHS girls' swim team. The Hodag girls won their first conference title since 2002 and then won the sectional crown in dramatic fashion by one point over Rice Lake before heading to Madison last month.
Just like the boys' squad, the Hodag girls' had a fast Francis leading the way. Malia Francis proved to be a spark plug for the team as a sophomore, and capped off the season with a phenomenal swim in Madison.
Francis won both the 100 butterfly and the 100 backstroke at the state meet as the Hodags finished fifth overall, their best finish at state since 1994.
Though the individual state title drought for the Hodag girls' team was shorter than that of the boys - Malia Francis' older sister, Kiah, saw to that in 2016 with state titles in the 200 individual medley and the 100 breaststroke - the performances were equally impressive.
Malia Francis won the 100 butterfly by 1.38 seconds and then finished 0.07 seconds off the D2 state record in the 100 backstroke as she outdueled fellow sophomores Mara Freeman of McFarland and Anna teDuits of Madison Edgewood, who finished 1-2 in the event at state last year.
Those performances drew the attention of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association, which named Malia Francis its D2 girls' swimmer of the year, and her performance in the 100 backstroke at state the D2 girls' swim of the year.
Francis wasn't alone in her success at state. Junior Makenna Winnicki placed fourth in the 500 freestyle and joined Francis, Lisa Kennedy and Noelle St. Pierre to finish fifth in the 200 medley relay. The same quartet finished eighth in the 200 freestyle relay.
Success in the RHS swim program had been building since a string of leaner years in the late 2000s and early 2010s. This year marked the next step in that progression, coach Jenny Heck said.
"When it becomes not a hope that you're at state, but a plan that you're going to be at state - it's just a matter of in what and how many you can bring - I think that's what we really are striving for," she said. "I think it needs to be part of the culture that we are a fast team and we belong (competing with the teams) down south."
4. Hodag girls' basketball win first ever conference title
The Rhinelander High School girls' basketball team has had a conference championship banner in the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium. The problem was, there were no years on that banner - signifying an achievement that had always eluded the Hodags.
Until this year.
Rhinelander emphatically won its first conference title, cemented by winning their first 13 games in the 2019 calendar year, as the Lady Hodags completed an undefeated conference season and defeated Lakeland by three games for the conference crown.
"We've had a lot of nice teams, a lot of nice players over the years at Rhinelander," coach Ryan Clark said after the Hodags clinched the conference title at, of all places, Northland Pines - where Clark was the head boys' coach for several seasons before taking the girls' job in Rhinelander. "Everyone just kept working and you never know. These girls this year, they've always come to play. We haven't had one game where we haven't. They're a very loose bunch, but their tight and they're a joy to coach."
While it wasn't the night the Hodags' officially clinched the title, Rhinelander lifting the GNC trophy seemed inevitable following an 81-63 win over Lakeland Jan. 25 at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium, which gave Rhinelander a two-game lead on Lakeland with four games remaining in the conference season.
The Hodags would run the table the rest of the way and make it all the way to the WIAA Division 2 regional finals before falling to New London.
A big part of Rhinelander's success was the play of guard Kenedy Van Zile, who was the GNC girls' basketball player of the year last season as she averaged 26.4 points per game in league play. Van Zile reached the 1,000-point plateau for her career last February at Medford and, earlier this month, surpassed Becky Knutson as the program's all-time leading scorer.
During this impressive run, Clark has repeatedly called Van Zile the best player he has coached, either boy or girl.
"She's just a tremendous scorer," he said after Van Zile broke the program scoring record Dec. 6 at Northland Pines. "She can score on all levels. Very few kids at this age can shoot equally well off the dribble as they can off the catch. She can do both, and she can also attack the basket. She scores at all three levels and she's just really hard to defend."
5. RHS track team has magical spring
Perhaps we should have seen our No. 1 story coming, given the magic Hodag football coach Aaron Kraemer had worked a few months earlier with the RHS track team.
The boys' track team came from seemingly nowhere in 2019 - going from a fifth-place finish in the GNC standings a year prior to the team's first conference title since 1967.
Indications of just how good the Hodag boys could be started to develop early on as the team finished second in the GNC Indoor and followed that with a string of first-and-second place finishes that included the title at the prestigious Otto Bacher Invite in Merrill in early May.
It all came together for the Hodags during the championship season. Rhinelander scored two wins and 13 top-three finishes in the boys' division as it edged Medford by 17 points to win the Great Northern Conference championship.
Rhinelander followed that performance with a Division 2 regional championship a week later and eventually sent six athletes to the WIAA state meet in La Crosse.
There, the Rhinelander boys' 4x100- and 4x200-meter relays broke school records to earn spots in the finals for both races. The squad of Nick Kriesel, Josh Francisco, Caleb Olcikas and Anthony Kowalski finished fifth in the 4x200, while Kriesel, Francisco, AJ Kopplin and Kowalski finished sixth in the 4x100.
"It all started with a group of seniors who wanted to change something, wanted to do something different and wanted to hold everybody else to a higher standard, and hold themselves to a higher standard," Kraemer said, crediting the leadership of seniors Francisco and Kowalski. "Our seniors of led us to this and very fitting that those boys got chance to get on the podium. It just shows you how much a determination and desire that they and all of the other seniors, girls included, have led with all season - a great culmination to great year."
While RHS did not enjoy the same team success on the girls' side, sophomore Rebecca Lawrence found her way to the WIAA D2 state meet in the high jump in a weird odyssey that included a mis-applied tiebreaker at sectionals and a special exemption based on her sectional performance. Lawrence made the most of her opportunity, getting into a three-way jump off for the state title before settling for second place in the event.
6. Lakeland, Northern Edge girls' hockey teams merge
Conference rivals for several years, the Lakeland and Rhinelander/Antigo girls' hockey programs became one in 2019 - both sides agreeing that it made more sense to join forces than struggle with low numbers in a sport overrun by large, multi-school co-ops.
Initially, Rhinelander/Antigo was in talks to merge with Northland Pines prior to the 2018-19 season, but those plans dissolved just before the start of the season. The Edge went through that year, dressing as few as 10 healthy players at some times. Lakeland would have faced a similar numbers crunch for 2019-20 due to graduation, had it decided to merge with the Edge.
Late this past winter, Rhinelander, Antigo and Lakeland began talks of merging their co-ops. The deals passed through the respective school boards in late March, just ahead of an April 1 deadline to submit co-op applications to the WIAA for the 2019-20 season. The WIAA Board of Control officially approved the reconstructed Northern Edge - consisting of Rhinelander, Antigo, Lakeland, Mercer, Three Lakes, Tomahawk and Wabeno schools - at its April meeting.
"We're in a much better position than we were in last year, so I'm happy," Northern Edge coach Tom Roeser said.
The Edge ended up having a roster of more than 20 skaters this year - not quite enough to field a true varsity and JV squad as the schools originally hoped - but the team is fielding a varsity reserve team to play this weekend during the Hodagland tournament in Rhinelander.
7. Ellenbecker returns as RHS wrestling coach
Paul Ellenbecker appeared to be heading out on a high note, stepping down as head coach of the RHS wrestling team following a 2018 state tournament that saw the Hodags place three of their five qualifiers on the podium.
Fast forward roughly 18 months and Ellenbecker was back in the corner for the Hodag grapplers.
Ellenbecker was re-appointed head wrestling coach in October after the district cut ties with his replacement, Nathan Piasecki following one season.
When contacted by the River News, activities director Brian Paulson said Piasecki's dismissal was a "personal issue," without elaborating further. Piasecki did not respond to a message left seeking comment on the matter.
The Hodags struggled to fill weight classes in the 2018-19 season and finished fourth in the GNC following a string of four conference titles in five years. Ellenbecker's first order of business was to reassemble the coaching staff he had during his tenure between 2011 and 2018.
"I think this is good opportunity to get the old band back together and have all the people come together like they used to," Ellenbecker said during his re-introductory news conference. "It was a very successful seven years. We had a lot of fun, a lot of highs, not that many lows. It was a good experience and I did miss being around the people last year."
8. Another wintry wallop
Part of the reason the athletic facility improvements, in particular the soon-to-be-constructed dome, rank so high on our list is because of our No. 8 story - another stubbornly-late spring that created havoc in the prep sports calendar for the fourth time in seven years.
Mother Nature delivered a tease in early April as the RHS baseball team was able to get in a road doubleheader at Green Bay Notre Dame and the RHS boys' tennis team squeezed in a couple of road matches. Then, for the second year in a row, a massive late winter storm set the spring sports schedule back weeks.
The end result was another year of doubleheaders for the RHS baseball and softball teams, and more compacted schedules for the RHS golf and boys' tennis squads.
"I feel bad the most for our seniors because they really didn't get to experience a true varsity season where you could play single games," RHS baseball coach Joe Waksmonski said during the team's banquet in June. "They had to play two consecutive seasons of trying to scrunch a whole season into a month. It can be a grind on them and not as enjoyable if you could play over two months. It is what it is and we did the best we could."
9. Hodag tennis continues GNC dominance
Even as some of the teams the Rhinelander High School tennis teams face in the Great Northern Conference change, the end result seems to always stay the same -more GNC trophies to add the tennis team's impressive collection in the school's trophy case.
The Hodag boys and girls added two more conference trophies in 2019, doing so with relative ease. The boys' squad won its conference title in near perfect fashion. Not only did Rhinelander got a perfect 10-0 in conference duals, it scored 40 out of a possible 42 points at the GNC tournament. The Hodags ended with conference championships in six of the seven flights - only Freddy Wisner's runner-up finish at No. 3 singles prevented Rhinelander from a clean sweep of the conference.
The RHS girls' team was not as dominant, but still won the conference title by 18 points over Antigo - which was much less dramatic than the down-to-the-final-match thriller the Hodags used to beat the Red Robins for the conference title in 2018. Rhinelander finished in the top three in all seven flights.
In all, since joining the GNC in the fall of 2010, the Hodags have won 18 out of a possible 20 conference titles between the boys' and girls' programs.
"It's a great run - a lot of memories and a lot of faces in those years that I'll remember," coach Bob Heideman said.
10. Mountain bikers win state title
In a matter of five years one of the newest club sports in Rhinelander has gone from a fledgling operation to a state champion.
That transformation was completed back in October as the Rhinelander-Northwoods Composite mountain bike team - which includes riders from Rhinelander, Lakeland Union and Three Lakes high schools - won a Division 2 state championship in the Wisconsin High School Cycling League.
What helped win a state title for RNC is a competitive girls' squad and a points system that awards teams for having diversity in a sport that still skewed more than 80% male in Wisconsin during the 2019 season.
Lakeland's Johanna Craig won all five races in the WHSCL fall series to take the girls' varsity crown. Three Lakes' Megan Lester won the JV-3 crown, the second highest level of racing, and Rhinelander's Sage Flory was the JV-2 champion. Combined the three won 13 of a possible 15 starts between them.
"It's kind of a tribute to the fact that we have a pretty strong girls' program," coach Steve Engel said to the RNC team's success. "I didn't have anything to do with getting the girls to race, but I think once you have some girls, they enjoy each others company and it makes it easier when new people come in."
Information from River News reporter Jamie Taylor was used in this report.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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