Going the distance: Hodag boys fend off Lakeland, defend GNC track title

The Rhinelander High School boys’ track team had so many key pieces to replace from last year that it appeared defending its Great Northern Conference title would be a monumental task. 

Even going into meet day, the Hodags found themselves chasing conference rival Lakeland, projected 12 points behind the T-Birds . Somehow and some way, Rhinelander beat the odds.

Eight wins buoyed the Hodags as Rhinelander edged Lakeland by 15 points to repeat as conference champions Tuesday night at Mike Webster Stadium.

    Members of the Rhinelander High School boys’ track team, led in the front row, from left to right, by Wyatt Crowell, Ayden Myers, Avrom Barr, Jackson Weinzatl and Cyrus Leisure, take a victory lap around Mike Webster Stadium with the conference championship trophy after winning the GNC meet Tuesday, May 19. (Contributed photograph)
  

After a couple of key swings in late events, the Hodags needed only to legally finish the final event, the 4x400-meter relay, to lock up the conference title. Rhinelander did better than that as the squad of Matthew Haselton, Ryley Hull, Evan Shoeder and Cyrus Leisure won the event (3 minutes, 36.39 seconds), putting an exclamation point on another championship performance. 

While the Hodags had eight wins, coach Rod Olson said it ended up being a matter of quantity and quality that put Rhinelander over the top.

“We told all the athletes, both of male and the female athletes in the beginning of the year, we need to score deep,” he said. “I want to know who’s gonna step up, who’s gonna do this — not fill those shoes, but to fill the shoes in your own event to get some takeaway points from some of these other teams.”

Rhinelander’s depth shined brightest in the distance events, where they were a step ahead of Lakeland around every corner. Both Rhinelander and Lakeland went heavy with entries in the distance events, but the Hodags won all four, outscoring the T-Birds 70-41 in those races.

    Rhinelander’s Avrom Barr races ahead of Lakeland’s Charlie Ernst to the finish of the 3,200-meter run during the GNC championship track meet at Mike Webster Stadium Tuesday, May 19. Barr swept the titles in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters and was voted the conference’s male runner of the year. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Junior Avrom Barr was named GNC runner of the year, sweeping the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters. He watched teammate Greyson Gremban pull off the same triple last year, helping the boys to the conference title, and thanked the 2025 grad for laying the foundation to Rhinelander’s strong distance program.

“Distance definitely helped carry the team tonight,” he said. “I think a total of combined points from the distance on the boys’ side was 70. I got to thank Greyson Gremban for building the foundation for me, to be able to three-peat tonight and get player of the year plaque and help my team win the conference championship meet.”

“I think when you start to have success and you start to have some personalities like we’ve had in those distance ranks,” coach Olson added. “Greyson, who graduated last year, was a great leader in inspiring that carries for years. You start to build a tradition of we’re gonna we’re gonna build this powerhouse … When you do that, kids want to do that. I think we’re going to carry that for a while.” 

Barr’s three wins came in different fashion. The 1,600 turned into another match race between himself and Lakeland’s Charlie Ernst. As has been a constant all month, Ernst ran stride for stride with Barr until the final half lap, when Barr put on the afterburners and cruised to a 3-second win (4:37.32). Barr led wire-to-wire in the 800 (2:05.11), leading a 1-2 finish with teammate Jackson Weinzatl. In the 3,200, Lakeland put Barrett Eggen on the lead early in the race in an effort to force the pace. Barr didn’t bite, remaining in lockstep with Ernst. Once the two overtook Eggen near the halfway point it became another two-way battle, with Barr again out-kicking Ernst down the stretch to win by nearly 4 1/2 seconds (10:16.05).

“Sit and kick. All the races tonight came down to the last 200 meters. I’m very confident in my kick, and that was the mentality going to the races,” he said. “That’s what I did. I out-kicked everybody.”

Rhinelander banked on loading up its relays in hopes that teams would steal points from one another in the sprint races. Though Lakeland secured a 1-2 finish in the 200 with brothers Tyson and Blake Redman, that strategy seemed to pay off for the Hodags. 

    Rhinelander’s Sam Zwaard, left, takes the baton from teammate Ben Olson during the 4x200-meter relay in the GNC championship track meet at Mike Webster Stadium Tuesday, May 19. The Hodags won all four relay races in the meet. (Jeremy Mayo/River News)
  

Rhinelander claimed the 4x200 in conference-record time with Ben Olson, Sam Zwaard, Shoeder and Leisure (1:32.44). Olson, Zwaard, Shoeder and Amos Bergman teamed up in the 4x100, with Bergman holding off the GNC’s 100-meter champ, Jacob Beer, in the anchor leg to win the race by 0.10 seconds (44.38).

“It’s so hard to do. You know the distance events are spread apart. The sprints, though, is tough,” coach Olson said. “You know, outside of the 100, you got a clump that’s so close and so hard to recover. We played a different bunch of different scenarios with Cyrus and Ben. What do we run them in? They’re integral in the relays, but then they’re in the top 10 in (the open events).”

Triple jump was another key swing event for the Hodags. The T-Birds were projected to have a 21-13 edge in that event. While Lakeland senior Marshall Holmquist won the event, the Hodags finished second and third with Landon Catlin (41-0) and Myles Eagleson (40-4 1/4) and added a sixth-place finish with freshman Cade Goffe (39-1 1/4) to swing the points in that event in their favor, 17-16.

“The boys triple jumpers, we talked Friday night. We had about a three-hour meeting and we thought, we’re going to do all three there too,” coach Olson said. “Because when you look at it, somebody’s going to pop off a big one, maybe someone from the other team isn’t going to have a good night. So we knew that we were going to go lighter on some other entries and go heavy where we saw those clumps and those, you know, top 6-8 places.”

Ayden Myers added a win for the Hodags in the pole vault (12-6) and the Hodags secured third-place finishes with Bergman in the 110 hurdles, Hull in the 300 hurdles, Weinzatl in the 1,600 and Gillingham in the 3,200.

Ben Olson made the finals in the 100-meter dash, finishing sixth. Hull was fifth in the 110 hurdles and the Hodags put two in the finals in the long jump — with Eagleson in fifth and Zwaard in eighth. 

The long jump results, which came in right before the start of the 4x400, put Rhinelander in a comfortable points position going into the final race. 

“I think just about everybody scored points. We had just one DQ for the boys, and then one performance that was off with kind of a pre-meet injury,” coach Olson said. “We scored points in everything that we could. So a real balanced approach. And the kids were excited.”

Barr said that excitement will carry into the postseason, beginning this coming Tuesday with the WIAA Division 2 regionals in Medford.

“We’ve all worked our butts off this season, and it’s very exciting to see that we were able to accomplish this tonight,” he said. “Now we got regional sectionals, and we’re gonna bring the same energy in competitiveness coming into these next few meets.”

In the interest of full disclosure, the River News notes 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].