Hodag Alpine sweeps conference finale

The Rhinelander/Northland Pines Alpine ski and snowboard team thrived on its home hill, sweeping the boys’ and girls’ skiing, and boys’ snowboard divisions in the WIARA Northern Conference season finale at Ski Brule in Iron River, Mich. Saturday, Feb. 7.

The performances were enough to ensure state meet appearances for all three squads as the WIARA championships kick off this Saturday in La Crosse. 

Coach Rod Olson said while other teams tailored courses to their skiers when they hosted during the season, his squad simply performed well on set ups designed to challenge all teams.

“The kids were just pumped up. They definitely have an advantage at home, knowing the terrain and the pitch,” he said. “I never set the same thing twice. I want them to see a lot of different stuff, because they’re not gonna have me set at state for them. They just skied well.”

Ben Olson led a dominant day for the RHS/Pines boys, who had four of the top five overall skiers on Saturday. He won slalom and giant slalom, and was second in Super G to take the combined meet victory. 

Junior Eli Repenshek came home third, senior Holden Schmitz was fourth and sophomore Wyler Koput was fifth. 

“Holden had a great meet, one of his best performances of his career,” coach Olson said. “It was great to see it on home hill, and as well, Ben. Ben just dominated the giant slalom in the slalom. Wyler and Eli got back on track.”

The Hodag girls, who entered the day tied with Rice Lake/Cameron for the third and final team qualifying spot in the league, got a major shot in the arm as sophomore Jessica Linn skied for the first time since Jan. 8 when she suffered a knee injury in the conference opener at Christie Mountain. Linn scored top-eight finishes in all three runs to come in third overall on the day. 

Linn was joined in the top 10 by Lucy Eddy (fifth) and Aila Bergman (sixth) as the Hodags defeated Wausau United by six points for first overall in the meet. 

“Girls skiers improved and they were tied for third, so they took a launch forward. They skied for it. So that was great,” coach Olson said. “Aila had a great day. Jessica was able to come back and race. We skied Thursday and then we were up at the hill with her on Friday. We’re like, yeah, let’s give it a try.”

The Hodag snowboard team edged Wausau by four points for the win on Saturday in only the second race this season that featured all three disciplines — slalom, giant slalom and boardercross. 

Senior Soren Dumar won the boardercross and the giant slalom and finished fourth on slalom to take first place in a tiebreaker over teammate Marshal Durkee. Durkee was the runner up in all three events. The tiebreaker between the two came down to cumulative time, which Dumar won by 1.92 seconds. 

“Snowboarders cleaned up well. And the boys were outstanding today,” coach Olson noted.

Overall results

Individually, Ben Olson won two of the three individual disciplines, but lost out on a tiebreaker to Wausau United’s Alber Hayek for the overall conference title. Both had four points after factoring in their three best races of the season, but Hayek won the tiebreaker by virtue of a better fourth finish — a seventh to Olson’s ninth. 

The two also wound up in a tie in Super G, in which Hayek was initially declared the winner, but an audit of the results revealed the tiebreaker procedure was incorrectly applied. The title ended up being decided on total time, with Ben Olson edging out Hayek by 0.27 seconds over the four Super G runs held during the season. 

“We did the math and over the course of the season, it ends up being about 6 feet difference. It’s pretty crazy,” coach Olson noted. 

Ben Olson was also the individual conference champion in slalom and was second in giant slalom.

Wyler Koput was fourth in the overall standings while Repenshek finished eighth. Repenshek was fifth in slalom and fourth in Super G; Koput took seventh in slalom, fourth in giant slalom and sixth in Super G and Holden Schmitz added a seventh-place finish in Super G for the season.

Bergman and Eddy tied for 11th overall in the girls’ skiing combined standings. Bergman earned all-conference honors with a seventh-place showing in giant slalom and a ninth-place performance in Super G. Eddy earned all-conference honors with a 10th-place finish in giant slalom.

In boys’ snowboarding, Dumar swept first in all four conference races to take the overall title while Durkee finished second in the final overall standings. Kamden Kostrova was fifth and Ayden Myers finished sixth. 

Dumar was the individual conference champ in all three disciplines; Durkee was second in giant slalom, third in boardercross and fourth in slalom; Kostrova took third in slalom, fourth in boardercross and fifth in giant slalom; Myers was sixth in both slalom and giant slalom, and seventh in boardercross.

State ahead

Attention now turns to the WIARA state meet this weekend. The snowboarders will compete on Saturday while the skiers compete Sunday and Monday. 

While coach Olson said he’s hoping for strong individual performances out of the boarders, how the team will fare is to be determined after Kostrova sustained an injury after one of his boots malfunctioned in warmups for giant slalom in the Brule race. His status for the weekend is up in the air. 

“We really had a good snowboard team, but it’s really depending on how he comes out of this injury, where we’re gonna be, and then getting him a pair of boots within a very short amount of time,” he said.

The Hodag boys are hoping for another strong performance at state after finishing third in Division 2 last season. Northern Conference champ Wausau United competes in Division 1.

“We are in a good position. I told the boys between Rhinelander and Pines, we got maybe 1,100 kids and we just lost the conference champion to somebody that has to combine three schools of almost 5,000 kids,” he said. “I said I don’t want you to think that the conference standings have anything to do with what we’re going to go down to La Crosse and try to accomplish. We are very competitive. We are very good. I said, remember what day we had today — and state training went well too. They all performed very well. The training was excellent. So I’m real excited about what they can, do at state.”

Coach Olson said Linn, despite just coming back from her knee injury, intends to compete at state and that experience will be good for the three seniors on the squad — Bergman and twin sisters Karlie and Claire Yunkers.

“We’ll see what the, you know, the girls can do. We’re just going down there to see how they do. We got some seniors that it’s great that they can make it and see what Jessica can do,” he said.