Hodag track places top two at Pines in first meet since dome deflation

EAGLE RIVER — After five long days for the program, the Rhinelander High School track team finally had a taste of normalcy on Thursday as it got back to competition. 

The Hodags fared well, winning the girls’ portion of the eight-team Northland Pines Indoor in Eagle River. The Hodag boys finished second in their division, but Thursday’s meet was more about just getting back into some sort of normal routine following the deflation of the Hodag Dome due to damage March 30 that left the team without its primary indoor training space and without a fair bit of its equipment.

“We were really using this as like, ‘Oh, we get a chance to practice in a bigger facility and use some blocks and use poles again.’ I think we needed it,” said coach Andy Wyss who watched over both the Hodag boys’ and girls’ squads Thursday with boys’ coach Aaron Kraemer attending the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association clinic in Madison. 

The Hodags had only two days of practice this past week, using the halls at RHS and other areas as make-shift facilities with the dome out of commission and Mike Webster Stadium still thawing out from an end of March snow and ice storm. That storm caused the power outage that ultimately led to the dome sustaining damage after a backup generator failed to automatically deploy.

Wyss said it was definitely a challenging week for the team, but he credited his squad’s resiliency given the unexpected circumstances. 

“We set the tone pretty early that they were going to need to be patient, they were going to need to be flexible,” he said. “We were going to be in a lot of different places and they need to be prepared to be outside, even when it’s bad out, just because that’s the way it is. If you come with a mindset of, you know, this is what it’s going to be like every day, then you can get through it.”

    Rhinelander’s Charlie Antonuk pole vaults during the Northland Pines Indoor Invitational track meet in Eagle River Thursday, April 3. The Hodags haven’t been able to practice the event since the last week of March and borrowed poles for the event with most of its equipment buried underneath the Hodag Dome following its delation Sunday, March 30. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

The pole vault portion of the program was the most impacted by the deflation. Not only has the team been unable to practice with its pole vault pit buried underneath the dome membrane, all of the team’s poles are under there too. The team borrowed poles from other schools to be able to compete on Thursday. Rhinelander fared OK with Emeline Hintz taking second, Macy Myers fourth and Brynn Teter fifth on the girls’ side, while Charlie Antonuk took fifth in the boys’ competition. However both Hintz and Myers were at least a foot off their personal bests of the season.  

“It’s been a while since we’ve been in a pit, and these are poles that they’re not used to,” Wyss said. “Just everything about it is different. You can tell we’re handing them a pole that they’ve never seen before or used before, and we’re expecting them to pick up where they left off. It sounds simple, but it really does mess with you when it’s not your stuff.”

    Rhinelander’s Ellie Cummings leads the field in the girls’ 4x400-meter relay during the Northland Pines Indoor Invitational track meet in Eagle River Thursday, April 3. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Myers had a strong meet elsewhere for the Hodag girls, as she was part of two of the team’s three wins on the evening. The sophomore claimed the 800-meter run (2:39.19) and was on the winning 4x400 relay at the end of the night with a trio of freshman — Ellie Cummings, Gretchen Fiebke and Madelynn Treder (4 minutes, 36.96 seconds). Junior Aila Bergman added a win for the Hodag girls in the 55-meter hurdles (9.76).

On the boys’ side, Landon Catlin claimed the triple jump (38-9 1/2), Greyson Gremban took the 800 (2:15.02) and Cyrus Leisure won the 200 (26.05).

Rhinelander’s girls edged reigning GNC-champion Tomahawk by 15 points for the title while the Hodag boys were second behind defending GNC co-champion Northland Pines. The Hodags did it with far from their strongest lineup, with a number of athletes either limited or not competing to be fresh for the Point Distance Carnival the following night or the Wisconsin Indoor State track meet on Saturday.

“We were a little depleted and I told the kids, my goal was not necessarily to put together the strongest lineup tonight. It was to give kids opportunities,” Wyss said. “I was just pleased to be in the mix with a lot of things. I didn’t put this lineup together with the intent of we’re going to go in, we’re going to score a lot of points and we’re going to dominate. It was I want to give kids opportunity today, and there were kids that took advantage of that opportunity.”

The Hodags showcased depth in the hurdle events on Thursday. In addition to Aila Bergman’s win in the 55 hurdles, senior teammate Averie West came home third. Rhinelander also went fourth, fifth and sixth in the girls’ 200 hurdles with Eva Heck, West and Fiebke. 

On the boys’ side sophomore Ryley Hull was the runner-up in the 200 hurdles and finished third in the 55 hurdles. Amos Bergman was second in the 55 hurdles and fourth in the 200 hurdles. Freshman Matthew Haselton added a fifth-place showing in the 55 hurdles.

“I really like the hurdle training that we’ve got going, I think we’ve got some good depth on both sides, and I think that training is going to serve them well,” Wyss said. “They really attack the hurdle and if we can train them not to be timid, you know, like coach (Rod) Olson does, they get after it, and they attack those hurdles.”

Freshman Addison Fish came home second in both the girls’ triple jump and long jump. Kara Monk was second in the 400 while Libbey Buchmann and Jalyn Zadnik went 2-3 in the shot put. Cummings added a third-place finish in the triple jump.  

Other top-five finishes for the Hodag girls included a fourth for Treder in the 200, a fourth for Teagan Turcotte in the high jump, fifth-place showings for Callie Hoerchler in the high jump and long jump, and a fifth-place run for the Hodags’ second entry in the 4x400 relay.

Leisure added third-place run in the 400 meters while Rhinelander took third in both the boys 4x200 and 4x400 relays. Amos Bergman, Grady DeBay, Kamden Kostrova and Sebastian Lieder-St. Peter made up the quartet in the 4x200. Antonuk, Kostrova, Dominic Lehmann and Renin Craig ran the 4x400.

Kostrova was fourth in the triple jump while Catlin took fourth in the 200. Michael Brunette and Wyatt Crowell finished 4-5 in the 800 and Hull added a fifth-place performance in the long jump. 

Weekend events

A handful of RHS track team members traveled to Stevens Point Friday for the Point Indoor Distance Carnival at UWSP.

On the boys’ side, senior Shawn Denis was the Hodags’ top finisher in the 800-meter run, taking 39th out of 183 runners (2:17.37). Avrom Barr was 27th in a field of 128 in the 1,600 (4:54.10) and Gremban took 16 out of 39 runners in the 3,200 (10:38.83).

Teter was 28th in a field of 129 in the girls’ 800 meters (2:42.74) while Monk was 29th out of 66 in the 1,600 (6:17.90). 

Additionally Jackson Weinzatl was 84th in the 800 and 34th in the 3,200, Brunette was 35th in the 3,200, Jonathan Campbell was 94th in the 800 and Konner Bex was 121st in the 800. 

A number of RHS athletes also competed Saturday at the Wisconsin State Indoor Championships in Whitewater. Neither the Hodag boys nor girls scored points in the meet, which brought in some of the top athletes across all three divisions in the state. 

Bergman had the best showing for the Hodags. She qualified ninth in the preliminaries of the 60-meter hurdles (9.50 seconds) and wound up 12th overall after getting knocked out in the semifinals (9.67). Buchmann was 28th in the shot put and the Hodags took 27th in the 4x200 relay with Bergman, Violet Biolo, Olivia Ruetz and Lexi Bishop. Biolo was 80th in the 60 meters while Lucy Eddy and Ruetz were 47th and 56th in the 400.

Truman Lamers competed in three events on the boys’ side, taking 24th in the high jump, 51st in the triple jump and 87th in the long jump. The Hodags were 28th in the 4x200 relay with Ben Olson, Sam Zwaard, Matthew Haselton and Eagleson. Haselton was 63rd in the 400, Eagleson was 86th in the long jump while Olson and Zwaard were 131st and 132nd in the 60. Logan Schwinger and Reid Schultz were 47th and 74th, respectively in the boys’ shot put.

More details on those events will be published in Friday’s edition of the River News. 

Up next

The Hodags will have their final scheduled indoor meets of the season when they travel to Wausau West later this week. The Hodag girls will compete Thursday and the Hodag boys will compete Friday. 

Conditions are forecasted to moderate into 50s later this week, and that may be exactly what the doctor ordered for the Hodags.

“Especially losing the facilities that we did and, being in the hallways is only going to get you so far, so we have we got to get outside and get to our facilities where we feel like home,” Wyss said.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].