Cross country: Hodag girls win Mosinee Invite

While the Rhinelander High School boys’ cross country team entered the 2024 season with Great Northern Conference championship aspirations, it’s the Hodag girls squad that has established itself as a conference title contender through two races this season. 

The Hodag girls bested most of the GNC on Tuesday and placed four runners in the top 20 as they won the Mosinee Invite at Nine Mile Forest in Wausau.

Rhinelander edged last year’s conference runner-up Medford by seven points for the title on Tuesday. Lakeland, which finished ahead of the Hodags in last week’s season opener in Rhinelander, was another six points back in a field that included every conference school except reigning GNC champion Tomahawk. 

Even then, given that the Hodags finished only a handful of points behind the Hatchets in last week’s opener, vying for a conference title in Eagle River come mid-October appears to be a legitimate possibility for the RHS girls.

“I really thought that our girls were going to be not quite in the mix in the beginning and they’ve just come on,” Hodag coach M.J. Laggis said. “They’re getting better and better. The key will be to keep them improving and healthy and just keep knocking off conference teams when we run against them. It’s really exciting. I hope we can keep it going.”

The Hodag boys were the second-best GNC team in the field Tuesday, coming home third overall behind Lakeland and Stratford. 

Part of the reason for the early success for the Hodag girls has been the emergence of two runners — senior Brynn Teter and sophomore Macy Myers. They led the Rhinelander squad for a second straight race. 

Teter made a late surge to finish as the top-placing Hodag, in ninth overall with a personal-best 5K time of 21 minutes, 21 seconds. Myers was only a second behind Teter as she placed 10th.

“They had a really good race,” Laggis said. “Macy was really strong today and she led most of the race. Brynn caught her right toward the end. They ran solid.”

Sophomore Kara Monk was Rhinelander’s third finisher. She placed 15th overall at 22:26. Senior Sophie Miljevich was 18th (22:37), sophomore Hayley Schiek was 24th (23:17), sophomore Ella Miljevich finished 40th (24:25) and sophomore Gabby Wanta took 43rd (25:14).

“They had a wall of girls and scored really well. That was a really, really nice improvement and big step for them to win a meet like that,” Laggis said. “I’m proud of the girls. They really did a good job and we’re really happy they were able to run in such a tight pack — tight enough to win. We’ll just keep going from there.”

Senior Greyson Gremban and sophomore Avrom Barr continued their strong starts to the season for the Hodag boys. Gremban came home fourth Tuesday with a time of 16:57 while Barr was fifth at 17:17.

“Greyson wears his heart right on his sleeve every single race. If anything goes wrong, he takes it personally. He’s a great teammate. He had a great race. Avrom was right there in the 2-hole,” Laggis said.

Sophomore Jackson Weinzatl was 17th (18:27) followed by senior Brody Kowieski (18:29). The remainder of Rhinelander’s top seven was made up of freshmen — Michael Brunette in 31st (19:40), Wyatt Crowell in 46th (20:27) and Grant Gremban in 48th (20:32).

“They improved from where they were last week. That’s really, really good. And, you’ve got to remember, Brody hasn’t raced in about a year with that injury. Brody’s figuring it out again and coming back,” Laggis said. “We’ve got to tighten up the Nos. 3, 4, 5, keep going in that direction to close the gap on the Lakelands of the world.”

Rhinelander is back in action next Tuesday in the Marshfield Invite at Wildwood Park.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].