Hodag wrestlers gear up for new sectional format

The Rhinelander High School boys’ wrestling team begins WIAA postseason play this Saturday and, unlike previous years, will know by the end of the day if it will have any wrestlers advance to the Kohl Center in Madison for the individual state meet.

A new postseason format for boys’ wrestling debuts tomorrow as Rhinelander will be one of 16 teams competing in a Division 2 sectional in Antigo. The top two finishers in each weight class will advance to the WIAA individual state tournament Feb. 26-28 in Madison while the top six teams in the meet will advance to a team sectional competition Feb. 21 in Oconto Falls. 

That’s different from previous years where a regional competition would send up to four wrestlers per weight to individual sectionals and the first-place team to team sectionals. 

While a bit of an unknown, Hodag coach Scottie Arneson said, on paper, the changes to the tournament make sense.

“Everybody’s kind of blind going into it like, what’s it really going to look like,” he said. “Are people going to be moving weights once everybody gets done weighing in? Our sectionals I think it’s middle of the pack for Division 2. I think there’s 36 ranked guys, which means there’s gonna be at least 12 ranked guys that aren’t making it to the state tournament. That’s a good thing for the sport. The reason the state tournament is the state tournament. It’s the guys that are elite and everybody else trying to chase it, which is what’s going to continue to grow to the sport of wrestling.”

The Antigo sectional includes six of the seven Great Northern Conference schools (Medford being the lone exception). Rhinelander comes into sectional weekend off a fifth-place finish at conference Saturday, Feb. 7 in Medford in which it had three all-conference performances. 

Ivan Loka (132 pounds) and Hoyt Dantoin (138) were the runners-up in their weight classes, while Anthony Boldt earned all-conference recognition with a third-place showing at 150.

“It was about what I would have expected,” Arneson said. “Any other week we would have our full (lineup), so hopefully next week we get the guys back in the lineup. We had a little bit of illness last week, which stunk because I think maybe we could have snuck up another (place), but, overall, I think it was a good day for us.”

Loka went 3-1 on the day, pinning all three of his opponents in the preliminary rounds before advancing to the championship match against Merrill’s Brett Suchocki. Loka was pinned there late in the second period but Arneson said it was a nice jump for the junior, after losing out on a tiebreaker for all-conference recognition and finishing fourth in his weight class a season ago.

“It was his most disciplined day for sure,” he said. “There were moments where you could see that he was trying to go back to his old ways of just trying to force stuff instead of just wrestling and letting the match go as it should. He stayed disciplined all day and just ran into a hammer from Merrill there at the end with Brett Suchocki.”

    Rhinelander’s Hoyt Dantoin turns Medford’s Corey McVicker during the GNC boys’ wrestling tournament in Medford Saturday, Feb. 7. Dantoin finished second in the 138-pound weight class, one of three all-conference performances for the Hodags at they finished fifth in the meet. (Matt Frey/Star News)
  

Dantoin scored his best finish at conference as he scored a 9-4 decision over Medford’s Corey McVicker to earn a spot in the championship match, where he was pinned in the final seconds of the second period by Antigo’s Jack Sundermeyer.

“Hoyt put together a good day, there were four in his weight class and he won the one to get him into the finals. I know that that’s the first time that’s happened for him, which is always a good thing,” Arneson said. “He did a good job. I know in the finals it looks like he got beat up a little bit, but he put himself in positions to score, but we just weren’t able to capitalize.”

Boldt split his preliminary matches, earning a 15-2 major decision over Lakeland’s Taitum Bauman before losing by technical fall to eventual conference champion Remington Skic of Merrill. That put Boldt in the third-place match against Tomahawk’s Mason Towle, who he pinned midway through the first period to receive all-conference honors. 

“Tony put together his best day in his high school career, and that’s what we shoot for,” Arneson said. “We’re not trying to be our best as a freshman or sophomore. Our goal is to be our best by our senior year and he’s showing that this is his year, which is an awesome thing.”

The Hodags had eight wrestlers compete last Saturday and edged Medford by six points for fifth place. Avrom Barr (144), Gage Anderson (157) and Brock Sternitzky (285) all finished fourth to narrowly miss all-conference honors in their brackets. Noah Leisure was fifth at 165 and Michael Tredupp was sixth at 126. 

The conference tournament standings mirrored that of the dual meet portion of the scheduled. Merrill swept both to earn the title in its return to the GNC after 16 seasons in the Wisconsin Valley Conference. Antigo, Tomahawk, Lakeland, Rhinelander, Medford and Mosinee rounded out the running order. 

Arneson said he knows his team will be an underdog as it tries to advance a wrestler to state this year, like it did with Logan Schwinger last season, but said the goal will be to try to win as many matches and wrestle as late into the day as possible from let the chips fall where they may.

“I think there’s some weight classes that definitely (have) more depth than others and our guys are going to go out there and compete,” he said. “For us being on the podium at the end of the day, I think they go out to eighth place or maybe sixth place. That would be like a traditional sectional qualifiers. None of our returning guys have ever been a sectional qualifier, so for us to make the podium this year, and then getting most guys back next year would be a step in the right direction. Once you’re on the podium, you have a chance to punch your way the state tournament. So, the goal is to be wrestling at the end of the day and if we keep winning at the sectional tournament, then we’ll get an extra week.”

Sectionals get underway 10 a.m. Saturday at Antigo High School’s Sheldon Fieldhouse. 

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].