Hodag swim sweeps Shawano/Seymour, now 3-0 in GNC

The Rhinelander High School boys’ swim team took its march through the Great Northern Conference to new territory Tuesday night.

The Hodags won all 11 events, and had all nine of their swimmers contribute to at least one victory, in a 107-43 win on the road at Shawano/Seymour.

Seymour, which co-oped with Shawano this year, hosted the event at their eight-lane facility. That meant roughly an extra half hour on the bus, each way. That didn’t seem to faze the team, even if the meet was done in roughly half the time it took to drive to the community due west of Green Bay.

“It was a lot of travel for a short amount of swimming, but we made the most out of it,” Hodag coach Jenny Heck said. “Now we have an eight-lane pool in the conference, which is kind of nice. It’s a nice pool, nice facility.”

Rhinelander swept the top two spots in eight events and had only two individual finishes outside the top two on the evening.  

“We tried to make it have some good racing competition within our team and I think we did that — not just with the relays but also the individual events,” Heck said, crediting assistant coach Brent Olson for setting up the lineup in a way that promoted intra-squad competition. 

Perhaps the best example of that was the program for junior teammates Shawn Denis and Mathias Fugle. They went head-to-head in both the 200-yard individual medley and the 500 freestyle and even swam the same leg of opposing entries in both the 200 medley and 200 freestyle relays.

Denis got the better of Fugle in both the IM (2:12.73) and the 500 (5:26.99), winning both events by less than a second. Fugle had the better end of the relays, swimming on the victorious 200 medley (1:50:35) and 200 freestyle (1:35.96) squads.

“Bubba (Fugle) and Shawn had a hard lineup, swimming both the 200 IM and 500 free,” Heck noted. “I think they swam all of their events in about 45 minutes. Their times were good and they pushed each other. They were in the exact same events, and even swam the same things on the relays.”

Brock Arrowood was Rhinelander’s lone four-event winner on the night. He took the 200 freestyle (1:57.50), the 100 freestyle (54.06) and was on the winning 200 freestyle and 400 freestyle (3:53.60) relays.

Senior Zacha King also claimed a pair of individual events for Rhinelander. He scored the win in the 50 freestyle (23.76) by more than a second over Shawano’s Ben Langlois and added a win in the 100 breaststroke (1:07.55).

“Zacha’s not known for his sprinting, but we said ‘We’re going to put you in this.’ They have a fairly fast 50 freestyle guy, who was a 24.0 converted. Zacha had never broke a 24 before and we said, ‘You know Zacha, let’s go for it,’” Heck said. “It was really good for him to get that win and break the 24-mark — especially since the 50 free isn’t really his favorite race to go after.”

Dolan O’Malley claimed the win in the 100 butterfly (58.68) and Samson Shinners took the win in the 100 backstroke (1:03.22). 

Judson O’Malley, Fugle, Shinners and Dolan O’Malley made up the winning quartet in the 200 medley relay. Arrowood, Dolan O’Malley, Charlie Antonuk and Fugle won the 200 freestyle relay. Shinners, Arrowood, Judson O’Malley and Christopher Larson won the 400 freestyle relay. 

In addition to Fugle’s runner-up finishes, Antonuk took second in the 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke. Dolan O’Malley was second in the 100 breaststroke.

“Charlie Antonuk swam well with his 100 fly and 100 back,” Heck said. “It’s neat to know we’re getting a little more options of what kids can do moving on to the end of season. Samson had a good 100 backstroke. It was nice to see some of these guys swimming different events and going after them.”

Rhinelander (3-0) closed out the first half of its season Thursday night at home in a GNC dual against Antigo at the Heck Pool that concluded after press time for today’s edition. 

The Hodags will then be idle from competition until Thursday, Jan. 4 when they will host Medford and Shawano/Seymour in a conference double dual at the Heck Family Community Pool. In the interim, the team will embark of some of its most rigorous training of the season over the holiday period. 

“I think these guys are going to be wishing they were doing some more meets,” Heck quipped. “The training’s going to be tough. This is where we’ve got to hunker down and get some of this hard work in, stay focused and realize we’re starting to see what other teams in other parts of the state are doing. We had a lot of work to do. Guys are swimming fast, so we’ve got to train hard so we get the results too.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].