Hodag wrestlers take 15th in Crandon

The Rhinelander High School wrestling team was short-handed Saturday as it traveled to Crandon for the Rebel Invite, hosted by the Laona/Wabeno/Three Lakes co-op. The Hodags had only nine wrestlers compete and took 15th overall in the 16-team meet.

A combination of illness, injury and other factors limited the Hodags’ lineup on Saturday. Most notably, heavyweight Reid Schultz was a scratch due to illness. For those who made the trip, coach Scottie Arneson said the goal was more early-season experience. 

“We saw a lot of good stuff from the things that we covered that were imperfect at Antigo last week, and we cleaned up some of those things. Obviously, with a young squad you can’t cover everything before your first meet, and the things that we were working on in practice this week we were able to see growth from where we were last week, which is always a positive thing.”

Senior Logan Schwinger was Rhinelander’s lone place winner, taking fourth in a loaded bracket at 190 pounds. 

Schwinger won his first two matches by pin to reach the semifinals, but fell to undefeated Max Matthias of Two Rivers in the semifinals and to Wittenberg-Birnamwood’s Bryson Schmid, who has only one loss, in the third-place match.

“Logan did a nice job opening his opening matches,” Arneson said. “The two guys that were in the finals of the weight class are All-Americans in different styles, and the guy that we lost to for third I believe we lost to twice last year. (We were) just in one of those brackets that’s really tough at this time of the year.”

Sophomore Gavin Dotter won two matches at 215 on Saturday and missed the podium by one win, as he was pinned in the consolation semifinals. Gage Anderson (150) and Hoyt Dantoin (132) each won one match for Rhinelander, but the five other wrestlers the Hodags brought went winless on the day.

“Gavin won two matches and wrestled much better than last week,” Arneson noted. “I think the level of competition that we have right now in our schedule is right where we need to be, which is always a good thing. You never want to overstep your level of talent and ability. You don’t want everybody to get discouraged, and people are feeling good on how they’re competing right now.

“It’s easy to look at results and just say, ‘Oh my goodness, we got killed out there today,’ but we did do a much better job with defending encountering like attacking getting ourselves into position to score. Now it’s just capitalizing and finishing in those positions.”

The Hodags will be back in action Thursday and Friday this week. The Hodags will travel to Antigo Thursday night to wrestle the Red Robins in the GNC dual meet opener, then Rhinelander will return home Friday for the annual Hodag Invite in the Hodag Dome. Twenty-eight boys’ teams and 27 girls teams are scheduled to attend.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].