Winter Practice Notebook

The Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team was up before the sun Monday morning as it rang in the first day of practice for the new winter sports season.

Practice was underway before 6 a.m., part of two-a-day sessions for the Lady Hodags during the first week of the season. 

That’s partly out of necessity as coach Ryan Clark begins his 12th year at the helm of the program. The team has to get ready for a multi-team scrimmage this Saturday in Wisconsin Dells. The regular season will open the following Thursday at Crandon. It’s part of busy early schedule for Rhinelander that will see that Hodags play four times before the calendar hits December. 

“For the kids, I’m sure they love it but, for a coach it’s a little bit nerve-wracking,” Clark said. “I told them I’ve just got to find out how we’re going to fit this group together.”

Clark said that may take a while as the Hodags figure out how to replace two of their top three scorers from last year in Lily Treder and Leah Jamison and return only four players who saw significant rotational minutes a season ago.  

“It might to take us a little while to how we want to be in terms of an identity as a team and define all their strengths,” he said. 

“We have a lot of inexperienced kids as far as meaningful varsity minutes,” Clark added. “It’s just kind of a big turnover graduating all of those seniors. I think we’re a competitive group, but let’s be loud and vocal in the gym. I thought they did pretty good at that as they practice went on.”

There was plenty of running up and down the court during Monday morning’s roughly 90-minute practice session. Clark said the morning sessions this week have been focused more on competition while the afternoon sessions have catered more toward instruction and skill work. He added the majority of his team has come into the season in solid physical shape, which will be a necessity, when the Hodags decide to put the pedal down and push tempo on the court. 

“I think we will be a team that, against most teams, we’ll probably be kind of an aggressive, pressing-style team that wants to get out in transition,” he said. “Against some other teams we’ll probably need to slow it down, but there’s a certain amount of games where we can play tempo and go a little faster.”

Following back-to-back road games to start the season, the Hodags will be home over the Thanksgiving weekend hosting D.C. Everest and Wausau West as part of an eight-team tournament. 

Numbers explode for Hodag gymnastics

    Karly Gillingham leads members of the Rhinelander High School gymnastics team during a balance beam drill at practice at the YMCA of the Northwoods Monday, Nov. 11. The Hodag gymnastics team has nearly tripled in numbers from last season, with more than 20 girls at Monday’s opening practice. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Coach Kristina Aschenbrenner admitted Monday that she needed to adjust her first week tactics on the fly as the RHS gymnastics team commenced its season — but the reason for the changes is a very good problem to have. 

The team’s numbers have nearly tripled from the start of last year. Twenty-one gymnasts were at the YMCA of the Northwoods on Monday and the team expects to pick up one or two more once the fall sports season fully winds down.

Aschenbrenner credited the “safe, fun, exciting” gymnastics experience the team demonstrated last year as a reason for the boom and said, as the season drew closer, more and more faces started popping in at open gyms.

“I would say the last month, after the fall season sports kind of ended, we just started seeing a new face and then a new face the next week and then they told their friends, and we some more new faces,” she said. “Last Friday there were a number of girls that came to open gym and we’re like, ‘yeah, we want to do this.’ It’s been great.”

The new faces are a mix in terms of their skills. There are a couple who are back after taking a year or two off of high school gymnastics, some are back after not having competed since middle school and some are out for the sport for the first time. Because of that, Aschenbrenner said, the opening week has become more about making sure everyone on the roster knows the basic ins and outs of the program and evaluating where everyone in terms of skills.

“We’re going to go back to basics. This is a new gym for a lot of the girls. We have to set up the equipment and put it back at the end of the night, so just making sure we’re setting up correctly, going through the basics, making sure everyone knows the right from for doing things, learning the drills to help improve those skills,” she said. “And (then) just working on the basics, getting to know what the requirements are for all the different events and then hopefully getting feedback from the girls to understand what their goals are.”

In addition to all the new gymnasts, the Hodags bring back virtually their entire roster from last year and Aschenbrenner said those returning gymnasts have already hit the ground running. 

“Picking floor music and choreographing those routines, a lot of those girls have done that over the year or have reached out to other people in the community who have those skills,” she said. “A lot of our girls are prepared and ready to go. That will be great because then we can focus on those who maybe didn’t know they were doing this until the last month.”

Gymnastics has the longest preseason lead-in of any WIAA sanctioned-sport, with the earliest day for competition set for Dec. 5. The Hodags will have a few extra days beyond that to prepare. Their first meet will be a GNC Small division dual meet at Ashland Dec. 10.

Alumni pitch in to help Hodag hockey

    Rhinelander High School alum Layne Roeser handles the puck against Hodag senior Karter Massey during a drill at RHS boys’ hockey practice at the Rhinelander Ice Arena Monday, Nov. 11. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

The Rhinelander High School boys’ hockey team had a few familiar faces on the ice Monday to help during the first practice of the season. 

A trio of Class of 2023 alums — Cody Everson, Layne Roeser and Caleb Shefveland — took part in Monday’s on-ice session. Shefveland, a former goalie, helped as a second netminder while Roeser and Everson participated with the skaters.

“Those guys help make the practice flow a little bit too,” Hodag coach M.J. Laggis said. “They can help out participating in the drills. Tonight, with 11 skaters, that’s really thin.”

Laggis said he expects the Hodags’ final roster number to be closer to 15 or 16, once everyone has turned in all of their required paperwork and are able to practice. Still, the Hodags will need all hands on deck this season after graduating its top three scorers from last season.

“We’re going to have three lines. We’re going to have four (defensemen). We’re going to have to count on those guys to keep getting better,” he said. “We’re going extra mornings this year and really trying to have an emphasis on being in great shape, developing skill.”

In addition to skill development, Laggis said there will be plenty of emphasis of shoring up what his team does in the defensive zone. That will be a necessity considering the Hodags graduated the program’s all-time leading scorer in Joey Belanger, last year’s top defenseman in Dalton Fritz and the team’s No. 1 goaltender in Tyler Kimmerling. 

“We’re going to have a huge emphasis in what we want to do in the defensive zone,” Laggis said. “We’re working on a lot of D-zone skills. We have a list of about 15 individual defensive zone skills that we’re just going to keep pounding and working on and try to be very difficult to score on. 

“We’ve got to try to get systems that work for the group that we have, not the systems that worked five years ago or whatever. Then the other thing is we’re tying to meet our kids where they’re at and get better everyday. (Assistant) coach (Wil) Losch just said it in the locker room and I can’t say it enough. We’ve just got to keep improving and see how far we can bring these guys along.” 

The Hodags will scrimmage Wisconsin Rapids this coming Thursday at the Rhinelander Ice Arena and will open the season Nov. 26 at Shawano.

Alpine skiers play the waiting game

    The Rhinelander members of the Rhinelander/Northland Pines Alpine ski team practice in the Hodag Dome Monday, Nov. 11. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

The law of averages would dictate that last year’s extremely dry and mild winter was an outlier, but Rhinelander/Northland Pines Alpine Ski coach Rod Olson has been left to wonder what he might be in for this season following a warm fall. 

“When it’s this warm, coming in off a year like we did last year, then I guess right now I’m my head am I thinking Xs and Os or am I thinking just are we going to get some training,” he said.

Just like last year, the Hodags are going to take some of those matters into their own hands with several team members heading out to train in Winter Park, Colo. the week of Thanksgiving. With hills locally struggling to make snow due to the mild temperatures, Olson conceded the trip may be the team’s lone on-hill opportunity for several weeks. 

“Not everyone is going but, for those that are, that might be our only option for two, three weeks,” he said. “Typically the hills are already blowing snow at Brule and Granite Peak but, not now. We’re hoping for Mother Nature to help us out this year more.”

In the meantime, the Rhinelander part of the team is either in the Hodag Dome or in the weight room, working on strength and conditioning. While Olson said a number of his athletes came in stronger and more coordinated than they were last year, much of the dryland training will be getting the athletes back in the mode of moving side-to-side like they will when they get on skis or on their boards.

“We’re just trying to get some of that fitness and muscle memory back,” he said. “If a kid’s been running cross country, they’ve been going forward, linear type motion. Now we’ve got to go to some lateral stuff.”

Olson said numbers are solid at the high school level, and estimates he’ll have between 24 and 27 athletes between Rhinelander and Northland Pines once the dust settles. Middle school numbers have tailed off a bit, partly because of the number of cancellations and postponements created by last year’s unusual winter. Olson added that his team’s numbers still skew heavily toward the ski side as snowboarder numbers have yet to rebound to what they were in the early to mid 2010s.

“That’s not uncommon. We’re still struggling for numbers within the conference,” he said. “The La Crosse area teams, the numbers still aren’t where they were there. The Madison area’s still struggling a little bit too. The Milwaukee area, there’s just so many schools and population that some schools are trailing off in numbers but others are just evolving.”

The race season for the Hodags will not begin until after the new year. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at. [email protected].