RHS boys’ tennis stays strong with win over Ashland

The Rhinelander High School boys’ tennis team defeated Ashland 7-0 in Tuesday’s Great Northern Conference matchup against the Oredockers at the RHS tennis courts.

The Hodags took straight set wins in Nos. 2, 3, and 4 singles and Nos. 1 and 2 doubles, finishing off the sweep of all flights with a tiebreaking win for Asher Rivord. The junior took the match win in No. 1 singles over Ashland’s strong serving Adrian Erickson. His match over Erickson came as his fourth tiebreaker in four matches. In those four matches, Rivord is now 3-0-1, with one match getting nixed due to inclement weather. 

After falling 6-2 in the first set against Erickson, Rivord won the second set 6-2 and forced a tiebreaker. The tie was broken with a score of 10-4 when Rivord scored back-to-back points to secure the win. 

“(Rivord) was, he was challenged in a different way,” Hodag head coach Matt Nichols said, noting he worked with Rivord throughout the match and made adjustments to Erickson’s speedy serve, a serve that gave the Oredocker the edge in the first set. 

“That was a really, really nice opponent for Ashland, especially his serve was huge,” Nichols added. “So that was a huge thing we talked about moving from the first set and even through a little bit of the second set is, ‘how are we going to return that serve?’ Because once we got the serving, we started winning points, we started winning games. So we talked about that, he played around with it, took a set, but he eventually got it, figured it out, and then went on to win the match.”

Calvin Loomis served two aces in his No. 2 singles match, and took the straight set win 6-4 and 6-0. No. 3 singles win came from Aidan Lueder, winning sets 6-4 and 6-0. The singles flights were finished by No. 4 Brayden Barnhill, who handled his Ashland competition 6-0 and 6-2. 

Nichols said one of the patterns he looks for when making adjustments with his players is their footwork. A big emphasis for his team this week was footwork. 

“It was a lot of us trying to play ourselves mentally,” he said. “‘How can we play our best tennis?’ And just about every flight was, ‘can you quickly get to the ball, set your feet, so that you can get a good shot off of it?’ That’s what the majority of the matches were working on.”

New pairings in doubles this year are starting to take shape for the Hodags, with No. 1 doubles duo freshman Henry Bonardelli and sole senior Danek Koniar taking straight sets 6-1 and 6-0 over the Oredockers. Kellen O’Malley and Sam Loomis collected the No. 2 doubles win 6-0 and 6-1. The No. 3 doubles flight wasn’t fielded by Ashland, so Braydon Lorman and Owen Evers won the forfeit. 

“I think we’re getting a better idea of like skill set, strengths and weaknesses, and then trying to pair complementary players,” Nichols said of his doubles field. He added that “(Loomis) and (O’Malley) have been playing really well together. We see a couple other pairings ... I think this coming weekend we’ll really dial that in. We have five matches. It’ll give us some ability to move them around in some lower stakes matches.”

Rhinelander improved to 2-0 in the GNC and opened a six-point lead over Medford in the standings after the Raiders defeated Lakeland 5-2 on Tuesday.

This weekend the Hodags head to De Pere for the De Pere Invite, and will continue conference play when they travel to Lakeland on April 28. 

Blake Richard may be reached via email at  [email protected].