‘A win of our own’

WAUKESHA — The Rhinelander High School boys’ swim team was unable to defend its WIAA Division 2 state championship Friday night but came home with the next best thing.

The Hodags scored four runner-up finishes and placed second at the state championships in Waukesha. Rhinelander broke three school records in the process and wound up with eight podium finishes out of their 16 entries.

Nobody was catching McFarland. Last year’s state runners-up won seven events, shattered the D2 state record in two of the three relays and claimed the championship by 82 points. Yet the Hodags exceeded their projected total by 24 points and cruised to a comfortable 21-point margin over third-place Whitefish Bay.

It marked Rhinelander’s fifth runner-up finish at state — the Hodags placed second four straight years between 1965 and 1968. Rhinelander has placed in the top three at state in each of the last three years.

“It’s such a win in my mind,” coach Jenny Heck said. “When you’re swimming against a team like McFarland and you know how strong they are, we knew it was going to be a battle for second. It’s kind of a win of our own. We knew we had to swim great and all of these guys had to do their share. That’s what happened. When things come together like that, that’s a win in my book.”

“A trophy is a trophy,” said Zacha King, the lone senior on the Hodag squad. “Going into this it was very, very unlikely that anybody was going to beat McFarland. It was a race for second and we just pulled up and did what we had to do.”

    Rhinelander’s Zacha King swims the backstroke portion of the 200-yard individual medley during the WIAA Division 2 state boys’ swim meet in Waukesha Friday, Feb. 16. King broke the school record in the event with a time of 1 minute, 57.08 seconds as he finished fifth in the event. He added a runner-up finish for Rhinelander in the 100 backstroke. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Individually, King matched his performances at last year’s state meet. He came home second in the 100-yard backstroke. His time of 50.85 seconds would have been fast enough to win last year’s state meet. This time around, it finished 1.85 seconds behind McFarland freshman Blake TeBeest.

King also reprised his fifth-place finish in the 200 individual medley and, this time, he got to keep the school record in the event. He held it momentarily after winning the opening heat of the event last year, only to be eclipsed by senior Daniel Gillingham in the second heat. King’s 1:57.08 time on Friday was 1.01 seconds faster than Gillingham’s record. 

“Last year I took fifth, this year I took fifth. Last year I took a school record, but only held it for four minutes. This year, I’m going to hold it for a little bit longer this time,” King said. “I was happy that I got last year but I was even more happy for Daniel that he got it. Just to be under two minutes is an amazing athletic feat.”

While King called his finale “bittersweet,” Heck said King’s final meet as a Hodag could not have gone much better, as he was the only swimmer on the team to podium in all four of his events.

“What a terrific way to end your senior year, to have another trophy to bring home,” she said. “He achieved his goals and he’s excited. He’s going to keep swimming in college and I think this was just a perfect way to end his high school career.”

    Rhinelander’s Shawn Denis competes in the 100-yard breaststroke during the WIAA Division 2 state boys’ swim meet in Waukesha Friday, Feb. 16. Denis placed fifth in the event, setting a new school record with a time of 58.98 seconds. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Junior Shawn Denis also broke a school record that lasted exactly 364 days, becoming the first swimmer in school history to eclipse the 59-second mark in the 100 breaststroke. He went 58.98 in a fifth-place finish on Friday, beating Jack Antonuk’s mark at last year’s state meet by nearly a full second.

“It felt amazing. I watched Jack get that last year and I was like, ‘I can get that next year.’ He even told me he thought I’d get it (this) year. I proved him right,” Denis said.

Relays were strong for Rhinelander as they placed second to McFarland in all three. The Hodags saved the best for last. Needing only a seventh-place finish to lock up second in the team standings, the fifth-seeded Hodags went out strong and held second nearly the entire race. The squad of Brock Arrowood, King, Mathias Fugle and Samson Shinners came home in a time of 3:12.08, shattering a 30-year-old school record in the event by more than three seconds.

“They knew that varsity record was close,” Heck said. “They’re just fast. We knew they could do that and it was just so fun to watch because it was such a possibility. They way they were swimming, momentum was building. It was their night for that.”

Rhinelander opened its night with a runner-up finish in the 200 medley relay as King, Denis, Arrowood and Dolan O’Malley clocked in at 1:37.19. Nearly dead even entering the final leg, O’Malley’s 22.41-second split in the final 50-yard freestyle portion of the race helped propel the Hodags to a 0.53-second margin over third-place Nicolet.

Denis, Dolan O’Malley, Shinners and Fugle went 1:27.11 in a runner-up finish in the 200 freestyle relay, finishing only 0.11 seconds off the school record the Hodags set winning that event at state a year ago.

Rhinelander entered the night projected to edge Whitefish Bay by 2 1/2 points for the runner-up spot, but the Dukes fired the first salvo as fifth-seeded diver Tyler Emory won the event, putting Whitefish Bay six points above projections before the swimming events even began. 

    Rhinelander’s Mathias Fugle competes in the 100-yard freestyle during the WIAA Division 2 state boys’ swim meet in Waukesha Friday, Feb. 16. Fugle finished fifth in the event and was on the Hodags’ runner-up 400 freestyle relay that broke a school record with a time of 3 minute, 12.08 seconds. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

The two teams remained neck and neck, in terms of their performance versus their projections, through the first half of the meet. Rhinelander finally started to get some separation in the 100 freestyle as Fugle held on to his fifth seed (47.72) while Shinners took the win in the opening heat, vaulting up to sixth overall in the final standings (48.23). 

“There are often events that kind of turn the momentum and I thought the 100 free was one of those,” Heck said. “Samson and Bubba (Fugle) were sixth and fifth. To get that, that just got everyone excited because they knew they were sprinting fast, they knew they were just going to keep it going. That, in my mind, is where the momentum turned a little bit and I started feeling a little more comfortable.”

Rhinelander passed Whitefish Bay for the runner-up spot in the standings after placing four swimmers in the top 11 in the backstroke. In addition to King’s runner-up finish, Dolan O’Malley finished just outside the podium in the event. Despite swimming on short rest after competing moments earlier in the 200 freestyle relay, O’Malley took the opening heat of the event (54.01) and finished in seventh overall.

“Helping that 200 free relay to a second-place finish, hustling over, it was like five minutes maybe,” O’Malley said. “I was just going. I gave everything I had the whole time. I was a little close on that last turn, still a 54.01 was pretty good. It bumped me up to seventh, one spot off of podium and I couldn’t be more happy.”

Brock Arrowood added a ninth-place swim in the event while freshman Judson O’Malley was 11th, putting Rhinelander up 195-187 on Whitefish Bay with two events remaining. The Hodags stretched that lead to 16 going after the breaststroke and was able to cruise to the silver trophy. 

“It means a lot to bring another trophy back to Rhinelander,” Dolan O’Malley said. “All the hard work and dedication from all these guys this year. It’s just amazing to see it pay off in the end.”

Fugle added a seventh-place swim for the Hodags in the 50 freestyle while Shinners finished eighth in the 200 freestyle. Arrowood took 10th for the Hodags in the 100 butterfly while Dolan O’Malley and Denis finished 10th and 12th, respectively, in the 200 individual medley.

Usually overlooked in a state swimming landscape dominated by programs in the Madison and Milwaukee suburbs, coach Heck said it was rewarding to take a Hodag group that had only four returning swimmers from last year’s state championship team and come away with another trophy.

“Everything was so different this year, but you have to adjust and take the group you have,” she said. “That’s what these guys did. They molded together, formed their team. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of work. It’s exhausting, to be honest, but when you can do this and you’re there for each other and you work for each other, not just for yourself, this is what you see happen.”

With the King being the team’s lone graduate after this season, the possibility of making a run at another trophy in 2025 is not out of the question, though Heck said she wasn’t ready to think that far ahead just yet.

“I’m just thinking about this moment right now, but they’re a young group,” she said. “They should be proud. They’ve worked their butts off. It took some extreme dedication for this to happen. This doesn’t happen overnight. These guys have been working years on this. It’s great to see that hard work pays off.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].