Hodags withstand late Hurricane gust, claim first win of season

Things seemed easy through three quarters last Friday night for the Rhinelander High School football team against Hayward, leading 28-6 and seemingly in control of the contest. Though Hayward has not beaten Rhinelander since the teams started playing in 2020, the Hurricanes seemingly always find a way to make things interesting, and did so again in last week’s contest.

The Hodags withstood a pair of fourth-quarter rushing touchdowns from Hayward quarterback Keegan Walsh and defeated the Hurricanes 34-22 at Mike Webster Stadium. 

It was a breakout game for junior quarterback Abe Gretzinger, who threw for 224 yards and two touchdowns but, when the Hodags needed it most, the ground game came to the rescue. 

Senior Cyrus Leisure scored on a zig-zagging 12-yard run with 2:29 remaining after the Hurricanes had cut the lead to six. Rhinelander then recovered the ensuing kickoff, which Hayward thought was headed out of bounds, to seal the contest. 

Walsh also threw for 214 yards and a touchdown against Rhinelander, but the Hodags led wire-to-wire to get their first victory of the season.

“That’s a really, really good passing attack … Hayward’s a really classy team,” Hodag coach Aaron Kraemer said. “They play really hard. I thought we did a really nice job bending, but not breaking for the most part, and then finishing offensively when we needed to.”

Myles Eagleson rushed for 78 yards and two touchdowns for the Hodags, but appeared to injury his wrist when he was stonewalled on a third-and-1 run from the Hayward 31 with just more than three minutes remaining. 

After converting on fourth down with a 24-yard pass from Gretzinger to Rowan Wiczek, Leisure authored the play of the game as he sprinted right on a sweep, following two well-executed blocks by sophomore guard Tommy Eades. Seemingly hemmed in at the sideline around the 10, Leisure cut back inside, broke a tackle, bounced back outside, tip-toed along the boundary, dove for the end zone and reached the ball across the pylon for what proved to be the game-clinching score.

“I kept saying, ‘Oh, don’t cut back, don’t cut back.’ And then all of sudden he bounces out the front door because Tommy, you know, makes a hustle play and he finishes with a great dive into the end zone,” Kraemer said. “We needed it. I mean, we absolutely needed it. The momentum had swung the other way. If we don’t score on that drive, they get they’re down six and they get the ball in two minutes, three minutes to score. So we absolutely needed that play.”

Rhinelander overcame penalties to score on its opening drive. Gretzinger hit Wiczek for a 17-yard touchdown on third and goal to get the Hodags on the board five minutes into the contest. Walsh found Cade Schlapper — who had a 10-catch, 143-yard performance — for a four-yard score midway through the second quarter, but Rhinelander took a little extra breathing room to halftime when Eagleson scored from 10 yards out with 49 seconds before the break. 

Rhinelander added to the lead on the opening play of the second half, catching the Hayward secondary biting on a play action fake to Leisure. That left Ben Olson wide open in the middle of the field. He hauled in a Gretzinger pass near midfield and went the rest of the way for an 84-yard score that made it 21-6. 

“We saw their safeties really coming down hard into the box on our outside run,” Kraemer said. “And so I said, ‘This is the play we’re going to run. We’re going to send Ben down the seam, and it’s going to be a touchdown.’ And that’s exactly what happened on first play out of halftime.”

Eagleson added a three-yard run two drives later to give Rhinelander a 22-point lead. But Hayward responded with a 12-play, 70-yard drive capped of by a 20-yard run from Walsh with 10:36 remaining. After a Hodag three-and-out, Hayward engineered an seven-play, 66-yard drive that finished with a Walsh two-yard run. A two-point pass from Walsh to Jacob Schuck made it 28-22 with 5:04 to play. 

Gretzinger bounced back from a 4-of-7 night with an interception in an opening 26-20 loss at Ashland to go 8 of 10 on Friday. Wiczek had a career-high 107 receiving yards in the contest. Kraemer said he had the confidence to put the ball in Gretzinger’s hands on a critical fourth-down play right before Leisure’s clinching touchdown.

“I looked at the guys and I said, ‘What do you like?’ And Abe said, ‘I like 17 Go Pass. If I get outside, then I’ll be able to run it and get the first down.’ Rowan was open. He hit him with it and you know, it was obviously a gutsy call on our part to throw on fourth down, but the way that they were packing the box, it gave us the opportunity to do that,” Kraemer said. “I’m really proud of Abe tonight. After last week, and you know, there was a confidence thing going on with him in his first game. And he came back tonight and he did his thing. He balled out tonight, did a really, really good job. The receivers got open tonight and caught everything.”

The news was not all good for Rhinelander, however, as Eagleson was seen leaving the field in with an air cast on his right arm following the game and was heading to receive further medical attention. In addition to being Rhinelander’s leading rusher through two games, he was played an impactful role at inside linebacker and has served as the team’s punter and place-kicker. 

“We don’t know if it’s a helmet to his wrist or he landed on it and braced,” Kraemer said immediately afterward. “Obviously our hearts go out to him. He had a really great game tonight, offensively and defensively, and obviously, he’s a senior captain, so you never want to see that happen — especially early on in the season. We’re going to check on him, make sure that he’s OK. We’ll see in the coming days what comes of that.” 

Leisure finished with 65 yards on nine carries for Rhinelander, Josh Willoughby, Eagleson’s backup at tailback, had nine carries for 42 yards. 

Axe Game ahead

The Hodags will look to take the momentum from last week’s win and do something it hasn’t done since 2021 — win a trophy game. Rhinelander has that chance as it hosts Lakeland tonight in the Northwoods Axe game at Mike Webster Stadium. 

The T-Birds come in 2-0 after playing the same two teams Rhinelander did in the opening two weeks of the regular season. Lakeland downed Hayward 50-23 in Week 1 and shut out Ashland 14-0 last week.

“(Lakeland coach) Dan (Barutha) is a great coach, and he’s going to have his team prepared and ready for every single thing that we could do and every single scenario in the game. That’s the type of guy that he is,” Kraemer said. “They’re going to be hungry to keep the Axe. We felt like last year we had the opportunity and it just slipped away late in the game. We’re hungry. And all the boys are hungry. You see them six or five times during the summer in passing league and, obviously, all year in their other sports. So our guys are hungry.”

To beat Lakeland, the Hodags are going to have to slow down a balanced and effective offense. Senior quarterback Deklan McQuade has been efficient through two games, completing 17 of 26 passes for 292 yards with three touchdowns and an interception. Senior receiver Evan Zoch has been his favorite target, with seven catches for 184 yards and three touchdowns on the year. Zoch also had a rushing touchdown last week as he had both scores for the T-Birds in their win against the Oredockers. 

Lakeland had a solid ground game but who the feature back for tonight’s contest remains to be seen. Senior Michael Schettino saw the bulk of the carries in Week 1, rushing for 90 yards and three scores. Sophomore Logan Burrows was the tailback for most of the game against the Oredockers, rushing 22 times for 94 yards.

“Lakeland presents a challenge on the offensive side of the ball for our defense,” Kraemer said. “They can run the football really well in their I formation. They have a very, very, very good quarterback and their outside receivers, they make plays. They always do, and they get the ball down the field vertically, but can press you vertically in the run game too. They got some big offensive linemen.”

Lakeland has also made play on the defensive side of the ball, with three takeaways so far on the year. One of those was a 60-yard interception return by Tyson Redman in the Week 1 win at Hayward. 

Tonight marks the 11th playing of the Northwoods Axe Game, a tradition started by the two teams, in conjunction with the Northwoods River News and The Lakeland Times, in 2015. Lakeland has won the last three meetings to take a 6-4 lead in the trophy trade series. 

“They got a great offense and they have a really sound defense too. So it’s going to be a tough game next week, but we get them here and we get the opportunity to take that Axe back, and I think that’s what the boys want to do,” Kraemer said. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].