November 2, 2022 at 1:48 p.m.
Winter earns Hodag football's 'Moose' Mathisson Award
Winter earns Hodag football's 'Moose' Mathisson Award
Kaleb Winter was named the team's 2022 Maurice "Moose" Mathisson Award, presented to the team's most outstanding senior, during the Hodags' season-ending banquet Sunday at Cabaret Cove.
It was one of only three awards presented by the team on Sunday. Fellow seniors David Fielhauer and Jackson Freese shared the team's Transformer Award.
"We don't do any awards that are necessarily based on statistics," Hodag coach Aaron Kraemer said, explaining the team's awards. "We do have awards that are based on our character model and are more merit-based awards."
To that end, the Mathisson Award - also known as the Heart of the Hodag award - goes to the senior who best embodied the spirit of the football program, both on and off the field.
Winter, who received honorable mention as a defensive back in the Great Northern Conference for a second straight season, finished eighth on the team with 21 tackles. That was despite suffering a knee injury on the opening kickoff of a Week 2 loss at Denmark that was originally believed to be season-ending. After a second opinion, Winter returned to the field for the final five games of the season and then was pressed into emergency duty in the backfield, after leading rusher Payton Campbell bowed out with what proved to be a season-ending upper leg injury.
Kraemer reminded the audience that it was the second significant knee injury Winter suffered during his high school career. Winter sustained another knee injury in 2020 that cost him most of his sophomore season.
"He had a terrible injury his sophomore year where he had every single reason in the world to never play another snap of football again," Kraemer said. "And he had every single reason in the world to complain about his plight and he decided to stand up against those odds.
"He's somebody I have a lot of respect for, for what he's been able to do against difficult odds. Not only that but, when you talk about our senior class, he's a guy that not only works to earn everything he gets, but brings other guys with him. He's a guy that had a great personality."
Fielhauer and Freese earned the Transformer Award for their progression as football players during their high school careers. Both were forced into significant roles defensively this season. Fielhauer made 15 tackles while starting a number of games at nose tackle. Freese had 13 tackles as a starting cornerback.
"Our coaches felt as if there were multiple winners of this award," Kraemer said. "These two guys, when you look at them, you can see a physical change, but the change that they made, for the most part, was on the football field."
Additionally, the Hodags recognized their three senior captains - Winter, Conner Jensen and Brenden Eckrich - all of whom had to battle through injury at some point during the season.
Rhinelander went 1-8 in an injury-riddled year that saw a number of key contributors on the sideline by season's end. Kraemer thanked the senior class who, with 23 wins, matched the Class of 2021 for the most wins in a four-year span for Rhinelander in well over five decades.
Kraemer said there was a feeling a disappointment, but that's only because of the hope this year's seniors help to instill in the program following three straight winning seasons.
"You brought hope back to Rhinelander football," he said. "Regardless of the 1-8 record, you have changed the way this program will operate moving into the future. You handled the strife. You dealt with it. You moved forward. These things forge you and make you better as human beings, and you will be better."
Kraemer also said, despite this year's results, he's excited about where the Hodag football program sits entering the offseason.
"I know it can be very hard to say that looking at the record, but I'm really excited about where we're at," he said. "I'm excited about the amount of work we need to put in to get better and the amount of upside that we have, the about of potential that we have in our freshman, sophomore and junior classes."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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