Clark misses another game, Lady Hodags fall at Medford

Sophomore Aubryn Clark missed her second straight contest Friday night for the Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team. The Hodags’ leading scorer will likely miss a few more games, but the team is starting to adjust to life without its standout guard.

A large deficit proved too much to overcome, but the Hodags fought back to make things interesting Friday in a 64-56 loss to Medford at Raider Hall. Down 28 early in the second half the Hodags were able to whittle the lead down to single digits in the final minutes. 

All of this was while Clark sat out again due to a lower back injury. Hodag coach Ryan Clark, Aubryn’s father, said the injury could sideline her for as many as 4 to 6 weeks, though he was optimistic that she could return toward the earlier side of that timeframe.

“She’ll be highly doubtful next Friday, but you maybe in two weeks or so is the goal,” coach Clark said. “I told them if we could all get better now and then, when we add her back in, we should look like a much more confident team who have multiple kids who are confident with the ball.”

The Hodags began to figure that out in the second half at Medford. Vivian Lamers scored a career-high 23 points to lead the Hodags while Kelsey Winter netted a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Overall, Rhinelander had one of its most balanced scoring outputs of the season as six different players tallied at least five points. 

“The girls really bought into that and I thought they competed hard,” coach Clark said. “The first half was more just kind of growing pains yet, second half was some improvement in some confidence, but if we could spring forward couple weeks, it'd be nice to have Aubryn and back and see what we got.”

The Hodags had a difficult time slowing down Medford’s Taylor Klingbeil. The six-foot sophomore finished the night with 28 points and eight rebounds to lead the Raiders.

Medford used an 10-0 run to create some separation and pull ahead 18-6 with 8:55 left in the first half and then used a 17-2 spurt to push the lead to 40-14 with 2:24 left before taking a 40-18 lead to the break. 

“I thought the first half Medford really pressured us hard, kind of like what Mosinee did. We’d struggle to just initiate offense. We didn't really play very good defense,” coach Clark said.

Medford was still up 52-25 with 13:19 left when the Hodags got rolling. Lamers scored 10 points, including eight from the foul line, during a 15-1 run that got Rhinelander within 57-47 with 3:13 remaining. A 3 by Dawsyn Barkus trimmed the gap to 59-50 with 2:22 remaining. Medford got the lead back to 12 at the foul line before Lamers made a pair of layups in the final minute to account for the final margin. 

Despite the loss, it was one of Rhinelander’s better shooting nights over the last three weeks. The Hodags shot 42% (18 of 43) from the field and committed 20 turnovers. Barkus added seven points for the Hodags, Lexi Beran had six and Ella Miljevich and Ellie Cummings each scored five.

“All those kids are just getting good reps at the varsity level against ball pressure and handling the pressure so really proud of the comeback,” coach Clark said. “I told them we can clean a few things up and maybe there’s a chance to win that game, but I thought we showed really good resiliency, good fight and we grew some confidence as well.”

Kayla Baumgartner added 11 points for Medford while Toryn Rau had 10.

Rhinelander (9-5, 4-3 Great Northern) has dropped its last three conference games and fallen into a third-place tie in the conference standings with Medford (7-8, 4-3). The good news for a banged up Hodag squad is it has time to rest before its next game Friday at Antigo. Even before the School District of Rhinelander closed all of its facilities and suspended extracurricular activities Monday due to cold weather, coach Clark was going to give his team an extra day off practice to rest and recover. 

“We’ve jut got to take a little pause, get a littler healthier, get a little fresher,” he said. “Then it’s two games a week from here on out the last five weeks so be a fun little stretch run.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].