Hodag wrestlers place 10th in opening tournament

The Rhinelander High School wrestling team got its first taste of competition for the year — and the first time ever in some individual cases — on Saturday in Antigo.

The end result for the Hodags was four individual top-six finishes in the varsity brackets and a 10th-place finish overall in the John Roberts Invite. 

The Hodags are young and inexperienced, especially at the lower weight classes, to start the season. Because of that, coach Scottie Arneson said mat time was the most important take away from the day. Rhinelander competed with 15 wrestlers on Saturday, all of whom got at least three matches, and 12 of them earned at least one victory on the day. 

“We had, I think, six kids that wrestled their first high school match and four kids that wrestled the first ever wrestling match so, for the development of the program, it was a really good day,” Arneson said. “I feel a lot better leaving this tournament than I did last year and I hope to goodness we can say that every single year from here on out. Just seeing the fight that the kids were putting forward today, you could see that there were questionable times during matches where it could’ve been easy just to roll over and get pinned, but that wasn’t happening today. So the fight and the desire and the want to win, or want to do and try their very best, is there.”

Senior Reid Schultz, one of two returning Great Northern Conference champions for Rhinelander, had the best individual day as he finished runner-up in the 285-pound weight class. Schultz breezed to the championship match, taking less than a minute to pin each of his first four opponents before falling to Division 1 WIAA state qualifier William McCorrison of Wausau West by 6-2 decision in the finals.

“We tried to we tried to force something that we didn’t really need to and that’s what ended up costing us the match,” Arneson noted. “He was still a little disappointed, but at the end of the day, Reid’s always smiley and happy. He was pretty pumped up about his performance today.”

Rhinelander’s other returning conference champion, senior Logan Schwinger, scored a fifth-place finish for Rhinelander in the 190-pound bracket. He scored pins in his two preliminary matches to earn a spot in the top six. He lost to Andy Servais of Pulaski by major decision and dropped a close 3-2 decision to Hayward’s Deangelo Sardina before pinning Rosholt’s Keegan O’Donnell to secure fifth-place in the bracket.

“I think both the kids that he ended up losing to were state qualifiers last year,” Arneson said, noting that Sardina is a returning state qualifier from the Hodags’ Division 2 sectional.

Junior Cyrus Leisure scored a sixth-place finish at 157 pounds. He won his first two matches by pin to earn a spot in the top half of his weight class, but then dropped three straight matches from there. Meanwhile sophomore Ivan Loka, who Arneson noted has not wrestled since kindergarten, finished sixth at 132 pounds on Saturday. He pinned Marathon’s CC Kasza in his varsity debut and added another pin later in the day against Lakeland’s Victory Reyes.

“He came out and won his first ever match. That usually doesn’t happen,” Arneson said. “If you just start wrestling in high school at a varsity-level tournament it’s almost a guaranteed loss. He ended up going out there getting a pin in his first match and it just looked like he was a natural at the sport of wrestling. That was really fun to see.”

Sophomore Hoyt Dantoin went 3-2 as Rhinelander’s second entry at 132 to take ninth place. Arneson noted that the three wins — all via pin — matched Dantoin’s win total from the 2023-24 season. Trevor Denton was ninth at 120. Grady DeBay (113), Gage Anderson (150) and Gavin Dotter (215) all finished 13th. Shayden Hylleberg was 14th at 285, Brayden Krieg was 17th at 150. Augustus Porter pinned teammate Noah Leisure as they finished 17th and 18th, respectively, at 144. Avrom Barr finished 20th at 138. 

Sophomore Brock Sternitzky competed in a 10-man varsity reserve bracket at 285 pounds, finishing fourth with three pins on the day. 

Rhinelander was one of three GNC schools in attendance on Saturday. Lakeland placed fifth and Antigo was ninth, only 13 1/2 points ahead of Rhinelander.

“Really everybody’s within striking distance of each other,” Arneson said. “At the end of the day it’s the first tournament of the year and I know we’re a little bit banged up and I know other teams are a little bit banged up, so the matches that we had we can certainly look at and watch again to try and nitpick and figure out how we can be even more successful against them, but the conference is starting to get better and that’s always great.”

Girls’ results

The Hodag girls’ wrestling team was in Antigo a night earlier, competing in the girls’ half of the Jon Roberts Invite. With only three entrants, Rhinelander finished 14th out of 23 teams in the field. 

All three wrestlers, including two who made their high school debuts, won multiple matches on Friday. Freshman Miranda Daab scored the highest finish, taking fourth in the 235-pound bracket. She won her first two matches to earn a spot in the championship bracket and her three losses came to the wresters who placed in the top three. 

Junior Mya Swanson, the team’s lone returning wrestler, was sixth in the 132-pound bracket. She split her matches in the preliminary rounds and earned a technical fall over Mosinee’s Payton Nechuta at the end of the second period to earn a spot in the consolation finals, where she lost to Abbotsford/

Colby’s Makenna Herrmann.

Sophomore Cassidy Lindner, another high school wrestling rookie, went 3-2 on the evening and took seventh at 126 pounds. She ended her night with victories by pin in her final two matches. 

Up next

The Hodag boys will be back in action this coming Saturday in the Logroller Invitational hosted by Laona/Wabeno/Three Lakes at the Forest County Potawatomi Community Center in Crandon. The Hodag girls are not officially back in action until the Hodag Scramble in the Hodag Dome Dec. 20, though the girls will likely get some exhibition matches a day earlier when Rhinelander returns to Antigo for a GNC dual meet against the Robins.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].