Spring practice notebook

There was not a single flake of snow on Stafford Field Monday as the RHS baseball team began its 2024 season. While there’s a little maintenance work to be done — and winter may have one final push — before the Hodags play on their home field, the fact that they could shortly is a big departure from last year.

“I think it’s exciting just for the development of our program, just to have players outside and practicing,” said Joe Waksmonski, who started his 18th season as skipper of the Hodags. “Yes, we do have a great facility here with the dome, but to really develop as a ball player, you’ve just got to be outside.”

Otherwise, the opening week of practice has not deviated far from opening weeks of the past. Monday evening’s first session was a scouting combine that tested players sprinting and agility, arm speed and bat speed. The rest of the week has been spent going through the fundamentals.

“A lot of going through the rudimentary stuff that every kid loves to go through, especially when you get to be juniors or seniors,” Waksmonski said with a tinge of sarcasm, “But, quite frankly, you rely on those kids to be the teachers and the leaders for your freshmen and sophomores.”

Those upperclassmen have been relied on to set the tone this year, given that a number of freshman have entered the program. A number of those freshmen were part of the 12U Little League All-Star team that made it to state three summers ago, giving the Hodags some optimism for the future of the program.

“It’s exciting to have that in our program to kind of see where they’re at baseball-wise. I know they’ve put in a ton of work since they were eight or nine years old,” Waksmonski said. “Really the name of the game is reps. The freshman group has been working hard. The coaches have done a great job with them growing up and it’s going to be exciting to see.”

Waksmonski said the team is in a good spot entering the season despite forgoing the seven days of designated pitcher and catcher instruction allotted by the WIAA in the week prior to the first official practice — due to the fact those dates once again fell during Rhinelander’s spring break. He said open gym attendance in the weeks leading up to spring break was strong.

Rhinelander is scheduled to conclude the opening week of practice Sunday with a scrimmage against Crandon inside the Hodag Dome.

“It will be a chance to see another team’s live pitching, have our pitchers go up against someone else’s hitters,” Waksmonski said. “It’s in the dome … We’ll have the ground rules and everything like that here in the dome, but it should be exciting.” 

The team’s first game of the season is scheduled for Tuesday, April 2 at Wittenberg-Birnamwood.

Outdoors calling Hodag soccer sooner rather than later

    Rhinelander High School girls’ soccer coach Nathan Bates addresses his team during morning practice Monday, March 18 in the Hodag Dome. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

The Hodag girls’ soccer team got a taste of practicing outdoors Monday afternoon and, Mother Nature permitting, will need to get used to the elements at Mike Webster Stadium late this week.

The Danny Mac Softball Classic started in the Hodag Dome yesterday afternoon and runs through Sunday. With the Hodags needing to get in seven days of practice prior to this Tuesday’s season opener against Hayward, that meant the team went outdoors yesterday afternoon to practice and, as long as the weather allows, will be there for the remainder of the weekend. 

“Typically, we’re out there trying to shovel the field because we’re getting anxious,” Hodag coach Nathan Bates said. “This year things look a little bit different. Hopefully it sticks out that way and continues to give us some good weather.”

Exactly how that will work remains to be seen, with chances for accumulating snow in the forecast both today and Sunday afternoon into Monday. 

“We’ll see how it goes as the week goes on. Thursday and Friday we’re supposed to be outside, so I guess we’ll play it day by day and see what Mother Nature brings us,” Bates added.

The Hodags are in a bit of a rush thanks to a late schedule flip-flop for next week. Rhinelander was originally scheduled to scrimmage Merrill on Tuesday and then host Hayward next Thursday, but those dates switched with Hayward not able to come to Rhinelander next Thursday. 

Luckily, with solid numbers and a good core of returning players, Bates said the team was able to hit the ground running this week with two-a-day practices that ran Monday through Thursday.

“We have quite a few returning from last year, which is good. We had good numbers all winter for skills (practices) that the captains were holding,” he said after Monday morning’s opening practice. “This morning we were able to hit the ground running pretty well. We have a lot of girls on the team, in general, that just understand that game and have been playing a long time.”

While there was plenty of work on skills and tactics over the course of the first week, Bates said one of the big points of emphasis was to start getting the incoming freshmen to gel with the returning players.

“We’ve got a lot of young talent on the team this year and we’ve got some girls that have been playing the last couple of year that are really good talents,” he said. “We’re just trying to get the girls together, meshing together, more team-type building and trying to get to know each other as a team.”

With the start of baseball and girls’ soccer practice, four of the six WIAA-sanctioned RHS spring sports are underway for the season. The final two — boys’ tennis and golf — will begin practice on Monday.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].