RHS gymnasts shine on vault in dual meet loss to Ashland

It’s been a long time since Rhinelander was even with perennial gymnastics power Ashland in any event. The Hodags were the Oredockers equal on vault Tuesday night.

    Rhinelander’s Karly Gillingham vaults during a GNC Small gymnastics meet against Ashland at the YMCA of the Northwoods Tuesday, Dec. 19. Gillingham finished second in the event behind teammate Alexis Smith. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Freshmen Alexis Smith and Karly Gillingham went 1-2 in that event, the highlight in a 114.95-102.1 loss for the Hodags to open Great Northern Conference Small division competition at the YMCA of the Northwoods.

Both teams finished with 31.1 points on vault, the highest scoring event for each side. Rhinelander was within 0.55 points of the Oredockers on the floor exercise as well. Those served as signs of improvement for a team looking to win its first conference dual since the 2021-22 season.

“Some of the things that we worked on the last week, or that we didn’t make at the invite, we were able to do this week. That’s great,” Hodag coach Kristina Aschenbrenner said. “The vaulting, everyone did really good on vault. We’re really happy with that and we had some good improvements on bars. We’re really happy with the results.”

    Rhinelander’s Alexis Smith performs on uneven bars during a GNC Small gymnastics meet against Ashland at the YMCA of the Northwoods Tuesday, Dec. 19. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Smith and Gillingham backed up podium finishes on vault in the season-opening Snowflake Invitational Dec. 9 with their 1-2 sweep of the event on Tuesday. Smith scored an 8.3 from the judges to win the event while Gillingham scored an 8.15 for the runner-up spot. They were the only two gymnasts to crack the 8.0 mark in any event on the night. 

The Hodags also got solid marks on vault from junior Wendy Fronk (7.35) and freshman Sam Aschenbrenner in the event (7.3) as they kept pace with the reigning GNC Small champs.

“Both Karly and Alexis have great vaults. They’re very consistent,” coach Aschenbrenner said. “Everyone threw good vaults tonight. We were just very consistent overall. Any one of the girls I think, at any given time, could get up there and place. Consistently, Karly and Alexis have done well. Hopefully they’ll be able to continue improving and stay on top.”

Both freshmen had other highlights as well. Smith tied for third on the floor exercise (7.6), just a tenth of a point out of first place. Gillingham came home third on the night on the balance beam (6.95). Sam Aschenbrenner led the Hodags with a fifth-place finish on uneven bars (5.5) and was the team’s top performer in the all-around, placing third with a 26.5.

“Sam was just very consistent overall,” coach Aschenbrenner noted.

Smith and Gillingham tied four fourth in the all-around (25.9) while Fronk finished seventh (23.4).

Ashland Leanna Lipske won the all-around (30.75), edging teammate Ella Pearson by 0.05 points.

The Hodags’ team score was down roughly two points from the season-opening Snowflake. That discrepancy that could mainly be chalked up to a tough night on the balance beam where there were a number of falls and no Hodag gymnast broke into the 7s.

“We just need to stay on beam. We have some tweaks we want to make there,” coach Aschenbrenner said. “Then we just have to get some of our leaps and jumps and combinations on floor and make sure we’re getting the jumps all the way around.”

Most of Ashland’s margin of victory came from the uneven bars, where they outscored the Hodags by nearly 10 points. Coach Aschenbrenner said that will be a major point of emphasis while the team is idle from competition over the holidays. She noted a new bars set up that will be stationed over the diving pit in the gymnastics studio at the Y should aid the team in acquiring some skills that will raise the starting values of their bars routines.

“We’re hoping that some of our girls can learn some flyaways, which is a real hard skill to learn without a pit,” she said. “We’re hoping that we can add that, which will increase our baseline scores, because it’s required to have that level of difficulty for a dismount.”

Rhinelander will see the Oredockers again Jan. 4 when it travels to Ashland for a non-conference triangular that will also include Lakeland.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].