Hodag swimmers cruise in home finale

The Rhinelander High School boys’ swim team cruised Thursday, Jan. 29 in its final home meet of the season.

The Hodags won nine of 11 events to take a double dual meet over Great Northern Conference foes Shawano/Seymour 122-48 and Medford 135-28 at the Heck Family Community Pool.

“It’s always fun to swim at home, and we’ve only had these really two double dual meets, which has been a little bit disappointing, because it’s so such a fun environment once we get going here,” coach Jenny Heck said. “But I thought it just had some great times going into the first half of the meet. The 200s were especially good.”

    Rhinelander’s Dean Gillingham swims the breaststroke leg of the 200-yard individual medley during a GNC double dual meet at the Heck Family Community Pool Thursday, Jan. 29. Gillingham won four events for the Hodags in the meet. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

The Hodags came out strong, nearly scoring maximum points over the first four event. Rhinelander’s top quartet of Charlie Antonuk, Dean Gillingham, Kellen O’Malley and Judson O’Malley won the 200-yard medley relay (1:43.83) followed by teammates Elias Simonsen, Paul Denis, Matthew Wood and Finn Thorsen. Judson O’Malley (1:59.04) led a 1-2-3 finish in the 200 freestyle with Thorsen and Kaleb Lehmann, while Gillingham (2:02.54), Antonuk and Kellen O’Malley went 1-2-3 in the 200 individual medley.

Judson O’Malley added another win in the 50 freestyle (23.26) with Daniel Meier third and Larson fourth as the Hodags led the Thunderhawks 49-13 and the Raiders 51-9 at intermission.

Both Gillingham and Judson O’Malley were four-event winners on the night. Gillingham added a win in the 100 freestyle (49.29) and both were on the winning 200 freestyle relay with Meier and Antonuk (1:33.12).

Rhinelander added another 1-2-3 finish with Kellen O’Malley (5:46.93), Larson and Lehmann in the 500 freestyle. Antonuk added a win in the 100 breaststroke (1:08.86) and Simonsen won the closes race of the night, inching past Medford’s Logan Rouiller over the final 25 yards to claim the 100 backstroke (1:06.56) by 0.11 seconds.

“Elias had a great finish for that win in the backstroke,” Heck said. “I was really proud of him as a freshman. You never know what everyone’s lineup’s going to be. I don’t know if he knew he had an opportunity to win that, but that’s pretty great for a freshman.”

Simonsen, Konner Bex, Broden Wagner and Larson added a runner-up finish in the 200 freestyle relay while Lehmann, Wood, Meier and Espen McMahon swam to a runner-up finish in the 400 freestyle relay.

“We were just trying to get more information, because we’re trying to formulate those relays for conference and sectionals,” Heck said of the team’s relay lineup on Thursday. “Their relay splits are important, and they knew that. So they’re going after it. They’re trying to earn a spot.”

Wood added a runner-up finish for the Hodags in the 100 butterfly, Thorsen was third in the 100 freestyle, McMahon was third in the 100 backstroke and Wagner took third in the 100 breaststroke.

Thursday was the final of the exhibition GNC double duals over the second half of the season. Rhinelander went 4-0 in single dual play earlier in the year and will carry a two-point lead over Shawano/Seymour in the conference standings heading into this coming Friday’s GNC meet in Minocqua. 

Given that Rhinelander beat Shawano/Seymour comfortably three times during the regular season, an eighth straight conference title seems all but assured for the Hodags. However, Heck said the team still has some variables in its lineup it’s still trying to sort out prior to conference and WIAA sectionals the following week.  

“We still are really unsure. We have so many guys that we could put in lots of different events, so we’re still not even sure of our lineup yet,” she said. We’ll evaluate how things look tonight and see where kids can do the best. I’m looking forward to a fun meet at Lakeland. 

“It’s all going to come down to next week, probably and we need options. We gotta try to get three relays in this year. That’s not going to be easy. How are we going to do that? How are we going to place the highest?”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].