Hodag softball goes winless in opening tourney

It was a trial by fire this past weekend for the Rhinelander High School softball team. A squad rebuilding after losing a number of key pieces from last season ran into some tough competition from the start, dropping all three games it played in the Danny Mac Classic at the Hodag Dome.

Big innings did in the Hodags as none of their three games reached the regulation distance. Clintonville opened the tournament with a 15-0 victory in four innings over the Hodags. Rhinelander then fell to Athens 17-3 and Thorp 23-6 in five-inning affairs to close out the tournament.

For first-year head coaches Ali Bender and Sadie Adamski, the opening weekend was affirmation that the team has a long way to go as the season progresses.

“We got to see a lot of girls in a lot of new positions, which is really awesome to see for our program,” Adamski said. “Yes, we had negatives but we also had a lot of positives and now we know what we truly need to focus on every single practice, making sure that our girls are just improving every time we’re on the field.”

Added Bender, “We have added a lot of new things to our program. We’ve have changed our bunt coverage. We have done some different cutoffs from the outfield. Just seeing them implement it this weekend, we definitely need to go back to the drawing board and re-practice that stuff. It’s the little things we’ve got to stop making mistakes on. Physical errors we can take. Mental errors we cannot take.”

Pitching appeared to be a primary concern going into the season after the Hodags graduated ace Addi DeMeyer off of last year’s team. The staff struggled in general as senior Laney Haenel, junior Kelsey Winter and sophomore Nevaeh Anderson combined to walk 36 batters in 13 innings of work. 

“We need to go back to the drawing board on pitching,” said Bender, a former standout pitcher for the Hodags. “We had, in our last game, I think 13 walks. You always know walks are going to score. We’ve got to cut down our walks in order to be able to win games. We’ve got to cut downs our mental errors behind our pitchers in order to win games. 

“Pitching, we’re going to start working with each girl individually more so (pitching coach) Danny (McDonald) has more time with them. As you see, we’re going to need multiple pitchers per game. That’s always going to be a philosophy. Nevaeh threw the most strikes. We had Laney and Kelsey. They were both throwing strong. We’ve just got to cut down the walks and the passed balls.”

Rhinelander trailed 1-0 after two innings in the opener against Clintonville before things went south in the bottom of the third. The Truckers sent 15 batters to the plate that inning, scoring nine runs. Five of those runs came via walks or hit batters with the bases loaded. 

Clintonville added five more runs before recording an out in the fourth to end the game via the 15-run rule. 

“We came out strong, had a great first two innings and then some mental mistakes happened and we kind of just shut down a little bit,” Adamski said.

    Rhinelander’s Kadyn Taylor hits a double during the first inning of a non-conference softball game against Clintonville in the Hodag Dome Friday, March 22. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

The Hodags got four hits overall against Clintonville, including doubles by Lucy Lindner and Kadyn Taylor. Haenel took the loss after starting and going 2 2/3 innings. Winter finished the game in relief.

Rhinelander trailed 3-2 after an inning against Athens thanks to RBI singles by Lily Treder and Lindner in the bottom of the first, but could not keep up. Athens scored three times each in the first three innings and blew the game open with a seven-run fifth inning. Rhinelander’s only other run came in the fourth after Lindner singled and scored on an error.

Winter took the loss in the Athens game, pitching the first inning. Anderson and Haenel each pitched two innings in relief.

“Our second game I felt like we came out, we were ready and then we kind of just weren’t. We kind of fell into a little slump,” Adamski said.

Thorp led 13-0 after 3 1/2 innings on Saturday, blowing the game open with a seven-run fourth. Rhinelander got three back thanks to some erratic relief pitching from the Cardinals. Five straight Hodags reached on a combination of walks and hit batters and Nora Rutkowski added an RBI single later in the inning. 

Thorp tacked on 10 more runs in the fifth. Haenel and Rutkowski drew bases-loaded free passes for Rhinelander in the bottom of the inning before an RBI single by Winter. 

Haenel started for Rhinelander, but walked three batters and allowed two hits before recording an out and was relieved by Anderson, who pitched into the fourth for Rhinelander. Winter finished out the fourth and started the fifth for Rhinelander before Anderson and Haenel returned in relief roles.

By the numbers, Anderson fared the best of Rhinelander’s three pitchers, giving up 10 earned runs on 10 hits with 10 walks and four strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings during the weekend. Adamski commended her as well as Taylor, who logged all 13 defensive innings behind the plate for Rhinelander.

“It’s been awesome to see both Kadyn and Nevaeh, because they were both on our team last year, become so much more confident and really step up to the plate this weekend for us,” she said.

Bender, meanwhile, credited a number of players for stepping out of their comfort zones. The Hodags had 15 players on the roster for the weekend, five of who were seeing their first varsity action.

“As we’re rotating pitchers, we’re rotating players,” she said. “We’re talking bases loaded and we’re asking girls to play positions that they’ve maybe practiced a few times. Just seeing them being able to be versatile and moving them on the fly was huge.” 

At this point, the tournament provided the only non-conference games on the Hodags’ schedule this year. Rhinelander (0-3, 0-0 Great Northern) was slated to travel to Medford this afternoon to open up GNC play. The prospects of that game being played as scheduled looked bleak, due to the snowstorm that hit the area Sunday afternoon and Monday, but the game had not yet been called as of press time Sunday morning.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].