August 19, 2020 at 11:02 a.m.
Fall practice notebook
Hodag harriers look to divide and conquer
Fall practice notebook
Coach M.J. Laggis said keeping the team in manageable groups will be key this season in terms of social distancing guidelines.
"We're trying to establish running groups, which is always difficult the first two weeks because kids are on vacation and some kids don't start on time (due to) summer jobs. You always have that week of a little influx back and forth," he said. "We've got to try to get permanent running groups established and then we're also going to try to establish running buddies. When we're just in pairs, you have the same running buddy. If we're in a bigger thing, you have your same running pod. We're being as safe as we can indoors with masks. Outside, we're dropping the masks when we're running and we'll do our best."
The team's racing schedule is still up in the air as practice begins. The season-opening Hodag Invite, scheduled for next Thursday, has been canceled and is expected to be rescheduled for Sept. 10. Laggis said he expects the site of the race to move from in front of RHS to the Cedric A. Vig Outdoor Classroom. A move to CAVOC would allow for one continuous 5-kilometer loop as opposed to an RHS course that overlaps on several occasions. Additionally, construction of a new junior varsity baseball field is ongoing in front of RHS, with the construction area covering part of the usual race course.
The Great Northern Conference athletic directors were set to meet this week to finalize a regular season schedule for cross country.
"They're going to try to hammer out a schedule where we run basically one meet a week and we run against conference opponents and/or schools nearby, like Three Lakes," Laggis said. "That's going to kind of be the format. We know we're not having our home meet next week."
Swimmers anxious about opportunity
On paper, the 2020 RHS girls' swim team could be the most talented to come through Rhinelander in nearly three decades. The team returns all four of its state qualifiers from last year, including D2 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke champion Malia Francis. Additionally, a number of freshmen are expected to contribute immediately.
The problem is, as of now, the only competition guaranteed for the Hodags is seven conference dual meets.
The GNC superintendents did away with the conference championship meet, which was scheduled for Rhinelander at the end of October. Exactly what the WIAA's "culminating event" for the fall girls' swim season will look like remains to be seen and may not be determined until the start of October.
"It was a very different talk on the first day of practice than it has been before, and that's because we need flexibility," coach Jenny Heck said. "I think the key is flexibility in our season. We want a season and we're not sure how it's going to happen.
"We have such a great team and such a talented team, we really hope that we can have a full season."
Even if there is some sort of state meet at the end of fall, it will look different as a number of the southern Wisconsin programs that the Hodags would have looked to have gone stroke for stroke with at state have already elected to participate in the alternate fall season. In girls' swimming, that season would begin Feb. 15 and culminate the week of April 5.
"According to WIAA, we'll have some kind of event at the end of the season. I hope that it can be even a conference meet. If numbers are good, I think we could safely put together some type of conference meet. I think that would be really important if everybody's on board. I think everyone in the GNC, as far as coaches, feels the same way," Heck said. "We all want to have a championship meet. Swimming's a little bit different in that you gear up, every practice, every day you work hard for a final kind of meet, your taper meet. They need to have goals so we need to know what's going on so we can have goals and shoot for goals. Of course, the goals may be different this year, but there are still going to be goals."
Heck stressed flexibility to her team in her opening address, as well as preparedness. Should the team be relegated to the alternate season, the schedule would run only eight weeks, as opposed to 13 weeks in the traditional fall season.
"The season would be short," she said. "I think there would be a lot of responsibility on the athlete to be training on their own to lead up to that time. If you're short four weeks or whatever it is, you have to be ready coming into the season. You can't just be getting in the water for the first time in four or five months and think you're going to improve. Training is going to be critical and it's going to take a lot of self-discipline for swimmers if that moves to the spring."
As currently scheduled, the Hodag swimmers will open the season Sept. 3 at Tomahawk.
Fast start key for Hodag tennis
Matt Nichols said he didn't feel any nerves Monday in his first official practice taking over for Bob Heideman, who finished with 260 wins as RHS girls' tennis coach, including a 203-50 record in his second stint at the helm, which ran from 2007-2019.
"I'm feeling pretty good," he said. "I got to know some of the girls over the summer with summer tennis. That's a big positive going into it. I'd say I'm more excited than nervous at this point."
There will be very little time for the Hodag netters to get used to their new coach before they are thrown into the fire of competition.
The delay to the start of the season cost the team its traditional scrimmage against Wausau West. The team's non-conference quadrangular meet scheduled for today was also canceled, as the three other teams scheduled to attend backed out. Still the squad will have only six practices under its belt before they host Marshfield Columbus this coming Tuesday to begin the conference duals, which carry even more weight this year considering there will not be an end-of-season conference championship tournament to factor into the final standings.
"It's really important that, from that first match and from Day 1 of practice, that we start running when we hit the ground. That's what we're planning to do," Nichols said. "We're really working the fundamentals. Serve is huge. I see that as one of the most important strokes of the game. We're really going to focus on the serve and then our overall attitude on the court."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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