Hodag girls finish runners-up in Ashland

ASHLAND — The Rhinelander High School girls’ track team got a number of pieces back in the lineup on Tuesday, and the results showed in the team standings.

Rhinelander captured four events, had 16 top-five finishes overall and came home second place in the eight-team Oredocker Large School Invite in Ashland. 

Hayward — which edged Rhinelander for the regional title last year — won out by 14 points this time, but coach Andy Wyss said he was pleased with what he saw out of the squad, especially considering many of the athletes were fresh off of Rhinelander’s spring break. 

“For a chunk of our team, they’ve only had four practices,” he said. “We’ve had a really kind of weird start to the season. Coming off a spring break with one kind of fine-tuned practice, and now here we are at a meet with some pretty good teams. Just kind of a good opportunity to shake the rust off and get back into the swing of things.”

Rhinelander’s two individual state qualifiers from last year were back in the lineup and got their seasons off to good starts. Senior Aila Bergman claimed the 55-meter hurdles (9.13 seconds) in a photo finish over Hayward’s Danika Kortendick, winning the lean to the tape by 0.01 seconds. She was also on the 4x400-meter relay team that came home second, along with sophomore Addison Fish, junior Kara Monk and sophomore Ellie Cummings. 

Macy Myers claimed the pole vault. Both she and fellow junior teammate Emeline Hintz cleared 10 feet, with Myers doing it in fewer attempts. Myers also led off the 4x800-meter relay with a 2:31 split as part of a third-place finish with freshman Noelle Mayo, senior Millie Gruett and sophomore Mady Treder. 

“We’ve had a few performances where it’s kind of girls getting back into the swing of things where I know that once they get more work under their belt, it’s going to be even better,” Wyss noted. “It looks rusty right now, I would say. And so if they’re coming in rusty, and that’s kind of their starting spot for the season, we’ll be all right.”

    Rhinelander’s Libbey Buchmann throws the shot during the Oredocker Large School Invite track meet in Ashland Tuesday, March 24. Buchmann and teammate Jalyn Zadnik finished 1-2 in the event. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Senior Libbey Buchmann led a strong Hodag contingent in the shot put. She improved nearly three feet from her performance March 20 at the Ripon Invite, threw a personal best of 36 feet, 2 inches, and won the event by nearly five feet over senior teammate Jalyn Zadnik. Junior Sam Aschenbrenner added a personal-best toss of 29-9 to come home fourth.

“One, two, four in the shot, which was surprising. Sam ended up in fourth. That was a good showing by those girls,” Wyss said. “The key is still going to be to keep Libbey, and even Jalyn now, to keep them healthy. Libbey last meet, just power through, really put no motion behind it. This meet, a little bit more. So we’re kind of still trying to work into it, and showing some good signs for the future. We talked about goals today, and the goal is 40, and being able to go from 33 to 36 with a little movement is a good step.”

Monk also improved on her win in the 1,600 March 20 at Ripon. Monk used a strong final 200 meters to pass Lakeland freshman Emerson Rubo, claim the win in the event, set a new personal-best time (5:41.64) and qualify for the WISTCA State Indoor Championships in Whitewater April 4.

“She’s been running with her game face on, and she had some pretty big goals,” Wyss said. “She ran really well at the first meet, and then she thought, ‘Indoor state is an achievable goal, something that I could get, that if I run a good race, I can do it.’ And that’s how she ran. She ran like she could do it, and she did.”

Freshman Marsadies Williams had another strong outing in the long jump, coming home second with a leap of 16-2.

The Hodags were third in the 4x200 relay with the team of Shyanne Hueckstaedt, Fish, Treder and Olivia Ruetz. Mayo finished third in the 3,200, Hintz was fourth in her season debut in the 55 hurdles, Cummings came home fourth in the 400, Violet Biolo took fifth in the 200 and Treder was fifth in the triple jump.

“We’re starting to build our depth,” Wyss said. “We had three decent vaulters today, three decent long jumpers, three decent hurdlers, three decent shot putters. We’re starting to build that, and we just haven’t had a lot of fine-tuned practice yet. Some of the things I saw today out of our jumpers are just things we haven’t had the chance to work on yet. I’m just trying to stay optimistic that we can take care of those things and keep building on what we’re doing and continue to build our depth.”

The Hodags were back in action Thursday at Northland Pines in a meet that concluded after press time for today’s edition. Visit River

NewsOnline.com for a recap of that contest and read a full report in Tuesday’s River News. 

Rhinelander competes Tuesday at the Merrill Indoor Invite.

In the interest of full disclosure, the River News notes that the author of this story has a family member who is an athlete on the RHS track team.  

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].