Wysses named to Hodag track staff

Former Three Lakes track and field coaches Andy and Jayme Wyss will be part of the Rhinelander High School coaching staff in 2025 it was confirmed this past week. 

Andy Wyss has been designated as girls’ head coach and will share program oversight with current head coach Aaron Kraemer. Jayme Wyss, who also serves as the head coach of the RHS volleyball team, will focus on pole vault and distance. 

“His résumé is top-notch, the expertise, the detail, he’ll be able to take the kids to the next step. It’s going to be a great opportunity for our kids,” RHS activities director Brian Paulson said. “And adding Jayme side-by-side, right there with him. It’s just going to be incredible.”

“You know both of them are athletes through track and field,” Kraemer said. “They live and breathe it and they love it so I’m excited to have them on board both Andy as the girls head coach and Jamie with her knowledge on pole vault and distance. It’s going to be really nice to have the two of them on board.” 

The husband-and-wife pair led Three Lakes’ track program between 2014 and 2022 with Andy serving as head coach and Jayme as an assistant. In that time, both the Bluejay boys and girls squads won five consecutive Northern Lakes Conference championships. The Three Lakes girls won two regional titles and one sectional title, and registered two top-six finishes in Division 3 at the WIAA state meet. 

The Three Lakes boys had a run of three straight regional titles from 2019-2022. Three Lakes had 25 podium finishers, six state runners-up and three state champions during that time span.

The last two seasons the two had served as track coaches at Marshfield Columbus.

Andy Wyss is entering his 17th season of coaching track and field. Prior to that he competed collegiately at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minn. where he competed in long jump, triple jump, high jump, sprints and decathlon. 

Jayme Wyss also competed collegiately at Concordia University where she set program records in the pole vault and was a provisional qualifier for the NCAA Division II indoor and outdoor national championship meets. She won the Green Bay and Wausau Triathlons in 2013 and 2014 and competed for Team USA at the Triathlon Age Group World Championships in 2015 and 2016. Earlier this month, she broke the American record in the women’s heptathlon during a meet in Kenosha (see related story), with her husband alongside coaching her.

“I think the biggest things that Andy and I will both bring to the Rhinelander track program is that we are very technical coaches,” Jayme Wyss recently told the River News. “If you looked at what we did at Three Lakes, we always the most sound field events … I think that him and I are really good at finding those things and addressing those things and bringing out the best in kids.”

Paulson said the sharp increase in numbers over the past several seasons — with a roster topping out at nearly 100 athletes last year — make it a good time to split the head coaching responsibilities between the boys’ and girls’ teams. 

“It gives the voice for the 90-plus kids, instead going to one coach to be a head coach and take all that responsibility can be quite cumbersome,” he said. 

Paulson said the coaching setup will be similar to the Hodag boys’ and girls’ wrestling program where Kraemer and Andy Wyss will work hand-in-hand under the umbrella of one program, but that it gives the team flexibility, should it want to attend separate boys’ and girls’ meets, or varsity/JV meets, on the same day in the future. 

“I think for the most part I want to keep the boys and girls together, but there may be some opportunities to take our JV to other meets and take some of our kids who need some experiences that are more elite before state, I think that’s going to be really nice,” Kraemer said.

In addition to overseeing the boys’ program, Kraemer will lead the throwing events. Andy Wyss will have a focus on sprints and horizontal jumps while Jayme Wyss will focus on distance and vertical jumps. Other coaches on staff will include Drake Biolo (sprints), Bennett Rozek (distance) and Rod Olson (hurdles).

“We’re going to have lots of coverage this year, which is nice and a depth of knowledge,” Kraemer said. “By the time it’s all said and done, I think we’ll have five (former) collegiate athletes in track and field on our staff, which is incredible for our kids to have that wealth of talent.”

The Hodag track team has placed in the top four in the GNC every year since 2019, winning the conference title in 2019 and 2022. The Hodag girls sent three entries to the WIAA state meet last year and are coming off their best conference finish since 1995.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].