June 5, 2023 at 9:10 a.m.
All-GNC: Hodag softball gets 5 honorees
Ratty, Schneider earn nods for RHS baseball
All-GNC: Hodag softball gets 5 honorees
Senior Addi DeMeyer led the list for Hodag softball, earning first-team recognition. Junior Lily Treder and senior Maddi Roeser earned second-team honors. Senior Abigale Johnson and sophomore Lucy Lindner received honorable mention.
In baseball, junior Max Ratty received second-team honors as both an infielder and utility player, as well as honorable mention as a pitcher. Senior Sam Schneider was named second-team in the conference as a catcher.
Voting took place Sunday, May 25 during the conference's spring coaches meetings. The GNC girls' soccer coaches also voted for all-conference awards last Sunday, but results of the voting will not be announced until after all conference schools have concluded WIAA tournament play, a conference spokesperson stated.
Softball
Coach D.J. DeMeyer was able to nominate six players for all-conference awards, based on the team's fourth place finish in the conference. Five of them received all-conference honors, led by DeMeyer's daughter, who was one of three pitchers to earn first-team recognition. The others were GNC player of the year Martha Miller from Medford and Lakeland's Saylor Timmerman.
Addi DeMeyer ranked third in the GNC with 104 strikeouts this season and her 3.19 ERA was fifth in the league.
"They voted Addi in first team, which kind of shocked me because her hitting stats weren't there," coach DeMeyer said, noting his daughter's .206 average in league play. "Everything else I think speaks for itself, her defense and her pitching ability. Obviously, the coaches must have thought of Addi to put her on first-team."
On the other hand, coach DeMeyer said he felt Treder, Rhinelander's lone all-GNC recipient in 2022, had a case for the all-conference first team. Her .378 average in conference led the team and her 14 total hits were tied for sixth overall in the conference. She also had a team-best eight RBIs in league play. Treder was also second in the conference with nine stolen bases.
She was joined on the second team by Roeser, who caught the majority of games this spring for the Hodags. She was second on the team behind Treder with a .314 batting average.
"Lily really had the stats, I thought, to be first-team all-conference. She ended up making second team," coach DeMeyer said. "Maddi Roeser, very deserving of second-team. She's another one, maybe outside chance (for first team). I think she batted right on the verge of first team/second team as far as stats, but very deserving of second team."
Johnson hit .250 for the Hodags in GNC play with six RBIs and had six stolen bases. Lindner had a .273 average and one RBI.
"We were able to get five of the is some accolades, which I think are well-deserved," coach DeMeyer said. "And I think it shows to the improvement of our team from last year to this year. I think if we go back and look at what we talked about at the beginning of the season, I thought we'd be maybe fourth, maybe third if we had a really good season. We ended up fourth."
Baseball
Battery mates Ratty and Schneider ended up as Rhinelander's only two all-conference honorees this season.
Ratty ended up with Rhinelander's best offensive numbers in league play, hitting .361 with four doubles and eight RBIs. On the mound, Ratty finished fourth in the league with 36 strikeouts and his 33 2/3 innings pitched were third-most in the conference.
"He had performances, pitching-wise, where he was dominant, a couple of performances where you add some stats and he kind of had a higher ERA than he would have liked for conference but, again, he was our ace. He threw the most innings and he competed in just about every game," Hodag coach Joe Waksmonski said.
Schneider was honored for his defensive prowess behind the plate, while putting up solid numbers with his bat. He hit .281 in the league with seven RBIs but led the team with a .477 on base percentage as opposing teams pitched him carefully out of the three-spot in the Hodag lineup.
"Sam, I believe, is the best defensive catcher in our conference," Waksmonski said. "Other people might think he might not have the best arm in the conference, but I think he's the best overall catcher as far as blocking, taking care of base-runners, just being accurate with his throws and being the captain on the field. As our No. 3 hitter, teams pitched him differently than they did some of our other bats and he kind of struggled a little bit this year as far as chasing some of those curveballs, maybe tried to push a little too much at the plate, but he had some fine numbers."
Other sports
All-conference awards for boys' tennis, golf and track were also announced. The majority of those awards were based on performances in each sport's respective conference meet(s).
All 10 starting members of the RHS boys' tennis team received all-conference honors, with nine of them earning first-team recognition by winning their respective flights at the GNC meet May 15 in Minocqua.
Dalton Fritz won singles player of the year by virtue of winning the No. 1 singles flight. Teammates Layne Roeser and Joey Belanger were doubles players of the year with the No. 1 doubles championship.
John Currie (No. 2 singles), Nick Lesch (No. 4 singles), Charlie Heck/Leo Losch (No. 2 doubles) and Eli Lundt/Dawson Pontell (No. 3 doubles) also earned spots on the first team.
Gavin Denis made the conference second team with his runner-up finish at No. 3 singles. Rhinelander's Matt Nichols was voted GNC coach of the year.
In golf, the Hodags had three all-conference players. Andrew Henrichs took home first-team honors by finishing fifth in the points standings in the seven-leg Great Northern Conference tournament. Brody Kowieski and Sam Schoppe each received honorable mention after placing 11th and 14th, respectively, in the conference standings.
In track, Rhinelander had 23 athletes earn all-conference honors in at least one event. Aila Bergman was the conference champion in the girls' 300-meter hurdles and was also part of a conference title in the girls' 4x400-meter relay with Reese Gehrig, Luna Grage and Gussie Gruett. Kaleb Winter earned first-team honors in the boys' pole vault.
Freshman Libbey Buchmann was the conference-runner up and took second-team honors in the girls' shot put and discus. Rhinelander had 19 athletes receive honorable mention for third-place finishes - Abe Barlog in the boys' 110-meter hurdles; Greyson Gremban in the boys' 3,200 meters; Shane Petrick in the boys' long jump; Truman Lamers in the boys' high jump; the boys' 4x100 relay team of Payton Campbell, Ben Olson, Sam Zwaard and Mason Baker; the boys' 4x400 relay team of Olson, Jackson Fuss, Daniel Gillingham and Cody Ruetz; the girls' 4x800 relay team of Grage, Juliana Smith, Maria Hubler and Brynn Teter; and the girls' 4x100 relay team of Gehrig, Lexi Bishop, Millie Gruett and Maddie Legrey.
Baseball schedule change
In other news coming out of the spring meetings, the GNC baseball coaches voted to revert back to a traditional double-round robin schedule for 2024 after five years of experimenting with a schedule that saw opponents face each other twice in the same week.
In theory, the change, in concert with the adaptation of WIAA-imposed pitch-count restrictions, was designed so that every team would face two different starting pitchers against each conference rival. The move never worked out as well as it looked on paper, however, due to the fickle spring weather. Late thaws meant condensed spring schedules in a number of years, and also created an imbalance of home games between teams in the southern half of the conference as opposed to those in the north, who had to wait longer for the snow to melt.
Waksmonski, who voted in favor of the proposal, noted this year Mosinee had nine conference home games as opposed to only two for the Hodags.
"Even the best springs that we have, there will be adjustments that have to be made," he said. "Competitively, the home and home is probably the better option but as far as just trying to manipulate the schedule and move around some home games between the northern teams and the southern teams in our conference, the old way of doing it, the round-robin way was the better way of doing it for our conference."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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