Hodag swimmers roll past Ladysmith 134-27 in GNC dual

The Rhinelander High School girls’ swim team remained undefeated in Great Northern Conference play, winning all 11 events Thursday in a 134-27 victory at Ladysmith.

Eight different Hodags found the winner’s circle against a short-handed Trident squad as Rhinelander improved to 6-0 on conference duals.

“Ladysmith has a really small team and the new coach is still working through getting things going. We had a long bus ride and some of the girls handled it really well and some of them didn’t,” said Hodag assistant coach Brent Olson, who skippered the squad on Thursday. 

Not only did the Hodags win all 11 events, they finished 1-2 in 10 of them and had six sweeps of the top three positions.  

Kiley Pooch was Rhinelander’s lone four-event winner on the night. She took the 200-yard individual medley (2:26.86), and the 100 backstroke (1:04.00) and was also part of the team’s winning 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays. 

Emma Houg swam to the win in the 100 butterfly (1:04.53) and the 100 breaststroke (1:17.57) as part of a three-win night. Vivian Lamers and Rylee Mickevicius also had three-win nights. Lamers took the 50 freestyle individual (25.18) while Mickevicius claimed the 100 freestyle (57.74).

June Chiamulera won the 200 freestyle for Rhinelander (2:08.95) while Millie Gruett claimed the 500 freestyle (6:05.80).

The closest races of the night were all intra-squad battles. Houg beat Kyree McMahon by 1.19 seconds in the breaststroke with Chiamulera third, 2.30 seconds back. Lamers (25.18), Mickevicius and Gruett were separated by 1.76 seconds in the 50 freestyle and Chiamulera beat Ella Heck by 2.56 seconds in the 200 freestyle. 

But the closest race of the night was in the 400 freestyle, where Lamers tracked down Chiamulera over the final 100 yards and edged her to the wall by 0.04 seconds to make winners out of a quartet that also included Maria Craig, Pooch and Ella Heck (4:07.97).

“I clocked her at a 55.1, which is also a season best on the 400 free relay,” Olson noted. “That one came down to a photo finish. June had a pretty good, sizable lead on Vivian and Vivian was able to run her down. June was coming out of the breaststroke and put in a good effort and was right at her season time, which is not easy to do coming out of the breaststroke.”

Freshman Aubree Edwardson was the runner-up for Rhinelander in the individual medley and freshman Lola Beach was second in the 100 butterfly. McMahon added a runner-up swim in the 100 freestyle, Lamers was second in the 500 freestyle and Ella Heck was second in the 100 backstroke. 

McMahon, Edwardson, Houg and Beach were the runner-up squad in the 200 medley relay. Beach, Gruett, Kyleigh Kennedy and Chiamulera were second in the 400 freestyle relay.

“I think just about everybody had a season time drop somewhere along the line,” Olson said. “Aubrey came out of the 500, which was a seven second drop, and had a season best time in the 200 free relay.”

The Hodags were back in action Saturday in the Fond du Lac Invite. Visit RiverNewsOnline.com for a recap of that meet and read a full report in the Friday, Oct. 10 edition of the River News. 

Rhinelander returns to GNC play at Mosinee this coming Thursday. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].