Track: Hodag girls rally to win Merrill Indoor

It came down to the final event on Thursday as the Rhinelander High School girls’ track team picked up its first meet victory of the 2024 season. 

The Hodags scored a runner-up finish in the 10-lap relay, which was just enough to vault them into first place in a hotly-contested Bluejay Indoor Invitational at Merrill High School.

Rhinelander entered the final event trailing Rib Lake by two points and in a position to strike as the Redettes did not have a entry in the relay. The team of Aila Bergman, Shyanne Hueckstaedt, Lena Timphus and Kayla Skubal came home second with a time of 4 minutes, 37.69 seconds. That was good enough to jump into first place overall. Merrill, which took third in the relay, wound up second in the final standings, five points behind Rhinelander. Rib Lake was third, 5 1/2 points behind, and Wittenberg-Birnamwood was one point further back in fourth. 

“I didn’t talk to the girls about it at all,” Hodag track coach Aaron Kraemer said of the late-meet scenario. “A couple of years ago I got obsessed with points and I was worried about where we were in the meet and I kind of stopped looking. I know the girls probably knew and they raced hard. They did a great job. We finished second in that race and that a kind of put us over.”

Winning was not exactly Rhinelander’s objective on Thursday. With a large roster, Kraemer said the aim was to collect more competition data for runners who were unable to compete at either the season-opening Wisconsin Rapids Indoor or the Ashland Indoor March 19.

“For the girls, what we did as much was we could, is see as many freshmen that we hadn’t seen before in different races,” Kraemer said. “Because the girls’ team is a little bit smaller, we were able to put some of our older athletes in too and they had a lot of success. But you still haven’t seen our whole team together yet. We’re very excited.”

The Hodags employed a similar strategy on the boys side and, despite winning five events, took second place on the night behind Waupaca in the six-team meet. 

The Hodags girls had only two event wins on the night, and both came late in the meet as Rhinelander charged to the front. Junior Luna Grage captured the 800-meter run (2 minutes, 55.44 seconds) and sophomore Aila Bergman claimed the win in the 200-meter dash (29.21).

    Rhinelander’s Kara Monk competes in the 1,600-meter run during the Bluejay Indoor Invitational in Merrill Thursday, March 28. Monk finished second in the event. (Matt Frey/Star News)
  

Grage’s win was part of a solid night for the Hodag distance crew all around. She was second in the 20-lap relay with Wendy Fronk, Brynn Teter and Kara Monk. Monk added a runner-up finish in the 1,600 and Teter was fourth in the 800. 

“I had a conversation with Luna Grage this week and said, ‘I just need you to solidify that distance group,’” Kraemer said. “Today she won the 800 and had a good split in the 4x8 and the girls races well together. Then you add to that group Kara Monk, who’s impressive too.”

Bergman took the night off of hurdles but still excelled in her two events. For Kraemer, the sophomore’s performance in the 200 drew comparison to what Cole Worrall did for the Hodag boys when Rhinelander won the Great Northern Conference title in 2022. A state-caliber hurdler, Worrall added the 200 to his program for conference and won that event, too.

“You throw Aila into any event and she’s a stud,” Kraemer said. “She just runs so smooth and she is such a graceful athlete. She’s somebody that she’s so talented in so many different things, she reminds me a lot of Cole (Worrall) where you don’t know where to necessarily put her. By the end of the year, when conference comes around, it’s going to be ‘Where’s Aila going to score the most points for us and what can she do for the team?’ The sky’s the limit for her.”

Freshman Olivia Ruetz scored runner-up finishes for Rhinelander in both the 50 and 400 meters. Rhinelander also took second in the four-lap relay with Millie Gruett, Reese Gehrig, Lexi Bishop and Kyleah Hartman.

Junior Truman Lamers was a late addition to the lineup for the Hodags on what was a scheduled night off. He competed in the high jump, winning that event for the second meet in a row. He was credited with a winning leap of 5 feet, 10 inches. 

“We didn’t plan on having Truman high jump this week. For him, it was kind of last-minute. We had a kid get sick and I looked at Truman and asked, ‘Do you want to high jump?’ He’s like, ‘Sure.’ We got him into the meet and he showed out,” Kraemer said.

Abe Barlog claimed the win for the Hodags in the 50-meter hurdles (9.00) and sophomore Sam Zwaard took the win in the 200 meters (26.28). 

That was part of a strong night for the younger half of the Hodag sprinting crew. Rhinelander won the four-lap relay with Ryley Hull, Myles Eagleson, Jackson Fuss and Ben Olson (1:19.89). The Hodags also won the 10-lap relay with Amos Bergman, Connor Dumpprope, Cyrus Leisure and Blake Kjos (4:06.00).

“In the sprints we didn’t go strong but we did go young and there were some impressive things that happened today, especially in some of the relays, Kraemer said. “Someone that’s been impressive to me since the beginning of the year is Sam Zwaard as a sophomore. He won the 200 today. I think he can go low 23s, if not lower than that, when we get outside. He was excellent this past week in our lactic work, our 18-second drill. He’s got the jets in the 100, but he’s a 200 guy I think. He can certainly run the 4x4.”

Teter added a third-place finish in her first pole vault of the season, clearing 6 feet. Karly Gillingham was fourth in the long jump and Teagan Turcotte finished fifth in the high jump. 

On the boys’ side, the Hodags scored third-place finishes with Avrom Barr in the 1,600, Jackson Weinzatl in the 800, Landon Catlin in the triple jump and the six-lap relay team of Tyler Grad, Damian Burkeland, Grady DeBay and Josh Haselton. 

Maxi Singhammer was fourth in the pole vault, Hull took fourth in the long jump and the Hodags took fourth and fifth in the shot put with Eric Parish and Sam Caselton. Dominic Lehmann added a fifth-place showing in the high jump, Barr was fifth in the long jump and Weinzatl took fifth in the 1,600.

The Hodags will be back in action on Thursday in the Great Northern Conference Indoor at Northland Pines High School in Eagle River. Though no longer an official conference meet, every GNC school is slated to be in the field along with Three Lakes from the Northern Lakes Conference. 

“It’s the opener for the conference. It’s the first time everybody gets to see each other together. You add Three Lakes into there and they have some impressive athletes,” Kraemer said. “We’ve seen Tomahawk indoor already, we saw maybe a skeleton crew for Lakeland but we haven’t seen them all yet. Our kids are going to want to be competitive. They’re going to want to go and try to win. As a coaching staff, this is our last indoor meet and we kind of owe it to them to try to put our best and strongest lineup out there so that we can try to win.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].