March 31, 2022 at 7:24 a.m.
Team preview: RHS girls' soccer
Hodags look the reload in wide open GNC
Team preview: RHS girls' soccer
Ashland, which won the previous three GNC titles, is now in the Heart O'North Conference. Rhinelander won six straight conference titles before Ashland's emergence and second-year head coach Nathan Bates hopes, by season's end, his side will be back on top of the GNC.
"We've got a lot of speed on the team and we've got a lot of heart and got a lot of skill," he said. "I honestly think if they girls can stick together and play together as a team and keep working hard, I think we could be at the top of this conference."
Not that it is going to be easy for a team that went 6-7-2 overall last season and was an even .500 in conference play at 4-4-1-0. The Hodags graduated five of their eight all-conference selections from that squad, including three of their top five scorers. The story of how this year's squad will come together will begin to be told this weekend as the Hodags host DeForest, Hayward and Shawano in and invitational at the Hodag Dome.
Arguably, Rhinelander's biggest hole is at goalkeeper where it graduated all-conference honoree Kahlie Arneson as well as her backup, Lily Berger. Bates said senior Noelle St. Pierre and sophomore Mya Krouze are competing to take over the starting spot.
"Mya and Noelle have been working really hard in the goal since the beginning (of practice) until now," he said. "The amount of improvement both of them have had in the goal has been tremendous. They're looking pretty good. I think they'll do fine this season. Kahlie's big shoes to fill but I think both of them will step up to the challenge and I think they'll do good for the team."
With inexperience in goal, it will be incumbent on the defense to lessen the keeper's workload. Senior Audrey Schiek is the only all-conference player returning on the back line, which lost starters Rachel Steffen and Abbey Henricks to graduation. The team does return a core of players who saw varsity action last year, including senior Mabel Spencer, and sophomores Aubrey Younker and Emma Chiamulera.
"I think we have a very strong back four and that's a big emphasis of ours," Bates said. "I've always tried to stack my defense. You build from the back and move to the front. That's kind of been my motto all along. Your defense needs to be tough and I think we have a very good defensive line back there and I think they'll do a good job protecting that goalkeeper."
In the attack, the team graduated leading scorer Ella Schiek, who amassed 36 points (16 goals, 4 assists) last year, as well as midfielders Gwyn Lowry and Kat Metropulos.
The team will look to two returning upperclassmen to shoulder much of the offense. Junior Ava Lamers had 23 points, including a team-high 11 assists, from the midfield and senior McKenna Brown had four goals and four assists last year. Both are returning second-team all-conference players.
"Ava does a great job distributing the ball and reading the field," Bates said. "She's very deadly. When you give her the opportunity to shoot, she's going to take it and she put in quite a few goals last year and she was a playmaker. She still is and she's better than she was last season."
Brown was slowed last year by a concussion that cost her a number of games, but Bates said the speedy senior is ready to create havoc at the top of the Hodags' attack.
"McKenna's a wrecking ball. She can shoot the ball and she's got crazy speed on her," he said. "She kind of got robbed last year. She didn't get to put on the show that I was hoping she would be able to last year due to injury ... She's healthy right now and she's been putting in a lot of work in the offseason and now during season, hitting the weight room. I'm expecting a lot out of McKenna this year. She's a heck of a player and a great captain on this team as well."
Senior Eleanor Steffen, who played the majority of her minutes on defense last year, plans to be moved into the midfield, where she'll join returning varsity players Annalyse Schoppe and Leah Jamison.
Brown will pretty much have a new cast of running mates up front as Bates said junior Navaeh Rappley, and freshmen Leah Weigel and Sophie Miljevich are among those battling for minutes.
Overall, the team has a roster of more than 30 players, roughly half of which will make the varsity roster with a few other splitting time between varsity and JV. Depth was a liability for the team last year, as it conceded a number of late-half and late-game goals on tired legs. This year, Bates said depth may be one of his team's greatest assets.
"We have a lot of depth, a lot of younger players on the bubble and also playing JV," he said. "They're doing great. They have a lot going for them and I think by putting them into the varsity games, the tempo of the game's not going to change a lot.
"It's pretty rare when you scrimmage your varsity and JV teams to see it look like a decent game, and that's what we're seeing right now."
Lakeland will likely be Rhinelander's biggest threat and figures to be the odds-on favorite in the GNC to start the season. The T-Birds return seven all-conference players, including first-teamers Naomi Hamerla, Sophia Myshchyshyn and Leah Wolfe off a team that twice beat Rhinelander last year and finished second in the conference behind the Oredockers.
"You've got a whole bunch of different players on their team that have been playing together a long time," Bates said. "They're going to be tough. They're definitely going to be tough.
"But, you look at the boys' season and you can't count anybody out. Every team was so evenly matched throughout the season, you never knew what was going to happen. I'm not quite sure what's going to shake out, but I'm going to vote on my girls all day long because I have confidence in them and I've seen what they've been doing and the work they've been putting in. I think we'll be just fine for the season."
Like last season, when Rhinelander defeated Marshfield on penalty kicks to win the regional title, the Hodags are in an unusual Division 2 half-sectional that stretches from Rhinelander to the north to the northern Madison suburb of DeForest to the south. That makes games like tonight's opener against the Norskies important for seeding implications at the end of the season.
"DeForest is a good program. It's going to be a good test for our very first game of the year. I think the girls are up for the challenge. I think we'll do all right," Bates said.
After this weekend's tournament the Hodags do not play again until a non-conference contest against Iron Mountain, Mich. April 12. Rhinelander will begin its GNC schedule April 14 at Medford.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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