September 23, 2019 at 11:23 a.m.
Hodag harriers tackle Smiley Invite
Hodag harriers tackle Smiley Invite
Already battling illness, the Hodags had to fight through a large field on a hilly course in muggy conditions in the mid-season event. The end results was finishes near the back of the pack in the Division 1 Small category. The Hodag girls finished seventh out of eight teams while the Hodag boys were 10th out of 11 teams.
"With Smiley, with all the competition and top teams from around the state there - the best of the best are there, period - it's easy to feel swallowed up by those teams," Hodag coach M.J. Laggis said. "To some extent, that's what it is, but it's a great field and great competition. I always go there and look at how well can you kids compete. Can they run hard, post good times and deal with the element of so many kids running on the course at the same time."
It did not help matters that the Hodags were not 100 percent healthy for the race, particularly on the boys' side. Jacob Weddle, normally Rhinelander's top runner, struggled to a 56th-place finish - third best on the team - with a time of 19 minutes, 45.5 seconds. Daniel Goldsworthy, also under the weather, was last on the varsity squad and 75th overall.
"Jacob Weddle was sicker than a dog. He wasn't at practice, but he showed up and ran today," Laggis said. "I give him a ton a credit for gutting it out and running for the team today, just a great job on his part, but I think that contributed to why he finished third on our team today. Daniel Goldsworthy was in the same boat and even though he was hurting throughout the race, he laid down a really gutty effort."
A pair of sophomores, Cal Laggis and Jaden Beske, emerged as Rhinelander's top two runners on Saturday. Laggis was 32nd with a time of 18:54.8 while Beske finished 50th at 19:27.0.
"(Cal) continues to impress. For a sophomore he's coming on and if he can continue to improve, he's going to make some noise in the next couple of years for sure," M.J. Laggis said. "He ran just a hard race and I was real pleased with his finish. He had a nice kick at the end. Jaden Beske, same thing. He's another sophomore and he's a worker. He just works hard and it's starting to play off on meet day."
Freshman Nathaniel Gibbs factored in the varsity scoring for the first time this season, finishing 66th. Levi Smith was 68th, Cody Ruetz was 69th and Nicholas St. Pierre finished 71st.
Juniors Abbey Henrichs and Ali DeNamur continued to pace the RHS girls' squad. They finished 21st and 23rd, respectively, in the girls' D1 Small race, separated by 7.9 seconds. Henrichs led the way with a final time of 22:24.1 over the 5-kilometer course.
"We had a really nice performance from Abbie Henrichs. Her and Ali DeNamur were just dueling for Nos. 1 and 2. The lead actually changed a few times between them," Laggis noted.
Sisters Audrey and Ella Schiek were next across for Rhinelander, in 40th and 44th, respectively. Emma Germain was 45th, Sage Flory finished 54th, Aubrey Younker was 62nd and Ellie Van Camp finished 64th.
The meet was part of an unusually busy race schedule for the Hodags, who are in the midst of competing in three races in six days. Rhinelander is back in action today at the Antigo Invite before heading to an invite Thursday in Three Lakes.
"That's not ideally how we wanted to set it up, but there were two factors," coach Laggis explained. "One was we didn't want to bail out of Three Lakes, the local meet. We just didn't want to do that. The other thing was we knew we had to run Antigo with conference being there. We've got to go do that. It's going to be a real light day Monday. It's going to be a real light day Wednesday and we'll try to do as well as we can in both those meets."
Antigo has a new course since the last time it hosted the Great Northern Conference meet. The team now runs at the Gartzke Flowage in Polar, which is both the site of today's meet and the GNCs on Oct. 18. Meanwhile, the Three Lakes Invite will also have a new venue on Thursday, being contested at Big Stone Golf Club in Three Lakes. The race had previously been held at Lions' Park in Sugar Camp.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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