Sports digest

Rhinelander ABC Banquet to be held May 14

The Rhinelander Athletic Booster Club will host its 44th annual awards banquet Wednesday, May 14 at The Pines Event Center

Tyler Johnson (Class of 2005, football) will be inducted into the Hodag Hall of Fame during the banquet. Additionally, the ABC will present its Heart of the Hodag award posthumously to youth baseball coach Dan Bauer, who passed away unexpectedly last November.

Additionally, the ABC will present its two $1,000 scholarships to a male and female Rhinelander High School senior student-athlete.

The May 14 event will begin with a social hour at 5 p.m., dinner at 6 p.m., followed by the ceremony. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. They can be reserved in advance by contacting ABC board member Kelsy Bontz at [email protected].

Tomahawk moves up to D-1 for hockey via performance factor

One of the smallest high school hockey programs in the state, based to enrollment, Tomahawk, will compete in Division 1 next year after being promoted via the WIAA’s tournament performance factor. 

The Hatchets won the WIAA Division 2 state tournament this past February which, coupled with a state tournament appearance in the 2023-24 season, caused the Hatchets to reach the six-point threshold required over a three-year period to be promoted to Division 1. 

According to a WIAA press release, Tomahawk appealed its promotion to the WIAA’s classification committee, but the appeal was denied, along with 11 other programs which attempted to appeal a promotion based on the performance factor. 

In total, there were 33 winter sports programs which reached the six-point threshold for promotion one division higher than their enrollment would place them in 2025-26. Programs that meet the performance points threshold to be promoted and are initially assigned to a lower enrollment division — based on their 2025-26 tournament assignment enrollments — will be promoted back into the division they competed in during the most recent season’s tournament series. Promoted teams are as follows:

Boys’ basketball (9) — La Crosse Aquinas, Arrowhead, De Pere, Kenosha St. Joseph Catholic, Milwaukee Academy of Science, Mineral Point, Pewaukee, West Salem, Wisconsin Lutheran.

Girls’ basketball (9) — Albany/Monticello, Arrowhead, Cuba City, Madison Edgewood, Laconia, Green Bay Notre Dame, Pewaukee, Wauwatosa East, Appleton Xavier.

Gymnastics (5) —Chippewa Falls/McDonell Catholic, Elkhorn, Franklin/Muskego, Verona/Edgewood, West Salem Co-op.

Boys’ hockey (5) — Brookfield East Co-op, Madison Edgewood, New Richmond, Green Bay Notre Dame, Tomahawk.

Boys’ wrestling (5) —Coleman, Fennimore, Kaukauna, Luxemburg-Casco, St. Croix Falls.

The performance factor does not apply to sports where there is only one division, such as girls’ hockey and girls’ wrestling, or sports where there is no team competent to advancing to the WIAA state meet, such as boys’ swimming. 

Additionally, the performance factor initiative. Additionally the initiative affords schools the opportunity to request to move to a division with lower or higher enrollments for all sports. The Classification Committee reviewed 16 such requests for winter sports. Four of the requests were to move up a division for the 2025-26 tournament series, including three in boys’ hockey (Edgewood, Superior and University School of Milwaukee) and one in boys’ basketball (West Allis Central). All four requests were approved. The remaining 12 requests were to move down for the 2025-26 tournament series, including five in boys’ basketball (Ashland, Green Bay East, Riverdale, Sevastopol and Sheboygan South), four in girls’ basketball (Ashland, Riverdale, Sheboygan South and Green Bay East), and three in boys’ hockey (Ashland, Barron and Medford). The committee approved all the requests to move down one division.

The Classification Committee consists of nine athletic directors, two principals and seven superintendents. The competitive balance performance factor was approved by a 265-115 membership vote at the WIAA 2023 Annual Meeting and was implemented for the first time in 2024-25.