RHS names new fall sports coaches

The two fall sports head coaching vacancies at Rhinelander High School have been filled with a handful of days remaining before their 2025 campaigns begin.

Adam Schmidt has been tabbed to lead the RHS girls’ golf team on its maiden voyage in 2025 while John Vojta has been named as the new boys’ soccer coach at RHS. Activities director Brian Paulson confirmed both hires in an interview with the River News late last week. 

Schmidt will bring an experienced hand and some stability to a girls’ golf program that has plenty of unknowns ahead of its inaugural season. Schmidt has served as RHS boys’ golf coach since 2013 and guided the Hodag boys to sectional golf team appearances in 2022 and 2023. 

“Adam just brings the knowledge of the game, but also he brings the experience of working with the golf courses, working with other coaches and other pros that he’s worked with through the boys program,” Paulson told the River News. 

He said the school has tried to get a girls’ golf program off the ground for the past several years, but has never had the participation from the student body to back it. He said that changed at the end of the 2024-25 school year with a school perception survey taken by those in the student body indicated an increased want for a standalone girls’ golf offering. 

Prior to this year, females wishing to play golf at RHS needed to play with the boys’ squad in the spring. One girl played golf with the boys’ program this past spring, according to a participation list obtained by the River News. 

Paulson noted that 15 girls attended an organizational meeting to gauge interest in the sport prior to the end of last school year and, as of late last week, nine had registered to participate this fall.

“This was a definite need,” he said.

Girls’ golf takes place in fall and will have 191 programs this season — 115 in Division 1 and another 76 in Division 2. Rhinelander, according to WIAA documents, will participate in Division 1 and be part of a 10-team sectional in early October at Brown County Golf Club that will feature predominantly programs from the Green Bay area. 

Paulson said, for a number of team members, this high school experience will be the first time they have played golf in a tournament setting. He noted that Schmidt’s coaching approach will be different than it has been with the varsity boys’ team as a result. 

“What’s awesome is he does understand that a lot of these girls, golf will be a little greener to them and that he’ll be more drill-focused, skill-based,” he said. 

As of Monday, a competition schedule for the team had not been posted for the team on Rhinelander High School’s scheduling software. Paulson said he wanted to ensure that there would be a team before he committed to any non-conference invitationals.

“We’ll be looking to get into seven or eight invites,” he said. “We won’t be a part of a conference. The GNC, we will be the only school that has girls’ golf, but it’s coming. There’s conversations going on with the women’s club and other schools in the GNC. I don’t think other schools would be far away.”

According to the WIAA’s data, Rhinelander is in fact the only GNC school to sponsor girls’ golf this season as either a standalone program or as part of a co-op. In fact, northcentral Wisconsin is relatively devoid of girls’ golf programs in general. The Wisconsin Valley Conference does sponsor girls’ golf and all six charter members of the conference do offer the sport — though Wausau East and Wausau West provide it as a co-operative effort between the two schools. All of those programs compete in Division 1. In Division 2, the closest program to Rhinelander is Ladysmith — roughly an hour and half to the west. 

With the addition of girls’ golf, there will be five WIAA-sanctioned sports offering for females at RHS this fall — joining volleyball, girls’ swimming, girls’ tennis and cross country. Mountain biking is also available to females as a club sport offering. 

According to the WIAA, Rhinelander High School’s enrollment for 2025-26 sits at 751 students. Paulson contended that participation rates are high enough to support an additional girls’ offering in the fall without adversely affecting other sports. 

“High school wise, we have just under 80% of kids participation,” he said. “Our middle school and our high school numbers are high. If we had bad participation numbers, if people weren’t participating, then we’d really be thinning the pool. Here, I think that we are giving these kids opportunity that want to do the sport, to be able to play in the fall with other female golfers compared to playing it in the spring.”

This coming Monday, Aug. 11, is the first day that girls’ golf teams can practice in the state, per WIAA guidelines. Competitions can begin as soon as Thursday, Aug. 14. 

Vojta to lead RHS boys’ soccer

While girls’ golf gets off the ground, the Hodag boys’ soccer team will have a new coach for 2025 and, for the first time in decades, it will be a voice from outside of the Hodag soccer community. 

John Vojta of Saint Germain has been hired to take over the position after Nathan Bates returned to the helm on an interim basis in 2024. 

Vojta comes to Rhinelander with previous coaching experience in soccer, basketball and football at Northland Pines High School in Eagle River. Vojta previously played professionally with the Milwaukee Wave indoor soccer team and has previous youth coaching experience both with the Wave and the Ozaukee Soccer Club. Vojta is also a licensed WIAA official. 

“He has so much knowledge to be able to help these kids,” Paulson said. “I would say the biggest thing that we struggle right now is with some skillwork. And for him and his knowledge to be able to be able to come here and be the head coach, we’re so lucky to have him on board.

“The one thing that really sticks out to me with John is just very organized and has a plan of where the team’s at now and where he’d like to see the team go. And through that plan, he’s able to have steps to help them get there.”

Vojta will be the program’s third different head coach in the three years since the team’s run to the WIAA Division 3 state tournament in 2022. Bates stepped down after that season, but returned in 2024 after John Weigel resigned after leading the team in 2023. In both of those cases, the head coach had prior experience on the RHS coaching staff — Weigel under Bates and Bates for a couple of years under longtime Hodag head coach Dan Millot. 

To that end, Paulson compared bringing Vojta into the Rhinelander coaching community to the impact coaches Jayme and Andy Wyss had with the Hodag volleyball (Jayme) and track (Jayme and Andy) programs last year. 

“I think people are coaches are talking about Rhinelander, and it’s a good place to be,” he said. “I think that we have some athletes and we have the facilities, of course. And, mostly, we have pretty good dedicated athletes that, (coaches) know, if they put that dedication, they know they can come here and be able to make an impact with those kids and help grow programs. That’s what coaches want to see. They want to help kids develop and be successful, not only in the win-loss column, but be successful moving on later on in life.” 

The Hodags are looking to bounce back after going 4-10-2 last year and finishing fourth in the GNC with a 3-5-1-1 mark. That included a 1-0 loss at Antigo last October which was Rhinelander’s first loss to the Red Robins since prior to 2003.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].