Lady Hodags wrap up summer with camp

With a number of returning starters and a talented incoming freshman class, coach Ryan Clark hopes the 2025-26 season can be one in which the Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team takes a step up and begins to contend for Great Northern Conference championships once again.

The Hodags got a taste of what the winter will be like last week as the team held a three-day implementation camp. 

The free camp, for players entering grades 8-12 this coming school year, served two purposes. It was part camp, in which the focus was on skill development and small-sided games. It also gave returning and incoming players a preview of what to expect this season.

“The goal is to kind of just get them all back together, right before the summer ends here,” coach Clark said. “It will be some camp-focused stuff, some drills and some competitive, small-sided of games. And then shooting. We want to get some shots up before the girls. But also just start introducing some of our stuff for next year. So when they go into the season, it’s not all brand new. They have a little bit of a background knowledge, prior knowledge on it. 

“I want them to walk out of the week, kind of excited about basketball. They know we’re going to be pretty talented, but just a new kind of flavor, I guess you could call it.”

That flavor predominantly tastes like man-to-man, on both sides of the ball. Coach Clark said the goal on the offensive side of the ball is to get back to an uptempo style of play — something the team had to shy away from during the second half of last season as injuries mounted and depth waned. He also said the goal will be for the team to run more of a European-style offense in the half court which, pun intended, is still a bit foreign to players and coaches alike.

“I’ve never run some of this stuff. We’ve run actions, but never fully a conceptual-type of offense. So there’ll be some learning curves for me as well, and our staff. But I think it’s really exciting,” he said.

Defensively, coach Clark said man-to-man would be the team’s primary defense, but the team would have the opportunity to jump into some trapping zones and presses — akin to what the Hodag boys’ squad did last year with a mix of man and 1-3-1. 

“With the mentality that we have, a lot of competitive aggressive girls, we’ll probably mix up our defenses and play a lot of different defenses,” he said.

The Hodags, despite losing start do-it-all-guard Aubryn Clark to a back injury during the second half of the season, still managed a winning campaign last year, going 13-12 overall and 7-5 in the Great Northern Conference. They drew the No. 5 seed in their regional for the WIAA tournament and fell in the regional semifinal round at fourth-seeded Menomonie, 57-42.

Aubryn Clark, a junior-to-be, was back practicing with the team last week. She is one of two all-conference players slated to return, along with fellow incoming junior Vivian Lamers. Lamers took over the primary scoring duties the final 12 games of the season once Aubryn Clark went out with injury. 

    Teagan Clark drives to the basket against Maddie Paulson during the Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team’s summer implementation camp at James Williams Middle School Tuesday, July 29. Clark and Paulson are two members of the incoming freshman class for the Hodags. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

In addition to those two and a number of returning players from the rotation, the team brings in a talented freshman class headlined by Aubryn Clark’s younger sister, Teagan. That promise showed this summer as the Hodags were competitive in the Ultimate Team Camp League held in Weston.

“I would say we’re better than, you know a good two-thirds of teams,” coach Clark said. “We have a little more talent and we’re really competitive and we have some good defensive players. I think in that sense, we’re pretty good. We can roll the ball out and beat some teams.

“I think we can be really competitive, but we also have to improve a lot and be really well-coached. Our schedule is probably appropriate for where we’re at. I think next year, the following year, we could probably up that one more step for sure. We’ll have everyone coming back, but for this year, there’s a lot of good tests, non-conference games, and then there’s some battles in conference too.”  

While a number of his players hit the AAU circuit this spring and summer, coach Clark said he took a relatively hands-off approach to summer contact — despite the WIAA lifting the limit on contact days this summer. 

“I kind of just took more of a mature approach,” he said. “To me, if you’re 15, 16, 17 years old, life is great. They’re getting their driver’s licenses. They have a little more freedom and independence, but the gym is always open, the (shooting) guns are out, the balls are always out. So I just told the girls, like, I will always be available if you need any help or want me to work with you. But for the most part, I just kind of put it on them. It’s their career. Some of the kids have taking really good advantage of it and have gotten better. And some of probably stayed kind of status quo. But I always tell them like, the winter season will ask you what you did in the summer, and I think we’ll have some kids who are playing minutes this next year because they won their summer.”

As for the GNC, the competition figures to be more wide open this year after Lakeland graduated incoming UW-Green Bay freshman Kristina Ouimette along with a number of other key pieces from a team that has won three straight conference titles. Coach Clark said Mosinee, however, which lost by three to Lakeland twice during the regular season and returns a number of key pieces, will likely be the favorite once games begin in late November. 

“There’s some other teams like Mosinee who are very talented, very organized, and we have our work cut out for us,” he said. “So I feel like we’re kind of in that nice little spot right now. I know we’re going to be pretty good, we should win quite a bit of games. We’ll be a tough matchup for a lot of teams, but I also know on the schedule, there are plenty of teams that can beat us and really be a challenge.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].