Hodag track closes out regular season, looks ahead to regionals

The Rhinelander High School track team closed out the regular season Thursday, May 21 at the Dale Peterson Invite in Antigo. Despite resting the vast majority of athletes who were part of last week’s Great Northern Conference championship efforts, both the Hodag boys and girls fared well, taking third in the nine-team meet.

Hodag girls’ track coach Andy Wyss said, program-wide, that approach was by design, and even though he saved most of his top athletes for this afternoon’s WIAA Division 2 regional meet in Medford, Thursday’s meet still served several purposes.

“Now that we’re getting down to the end, we’re finally starting to hit those where we got kids that are putting in work that might not see as much competition, and so this was a good opportunity for them to No. 1, kind of close out the regular season and shoot for one more PR before the season’s over,” he said. “No. 2, if you’re on the bubble of, maybe you’re going to be in regionals, maybe not, that gives you another shot to try to put down a mark worthy of being selected in that group. And then No. 3, we have some people very focused on trying to earn a varsity letter and that takes a certain amount of points. So we have some people that are motivated by (saying), ‘Hey, I want to put me in whatever’s going to get me points. I want to go to this meet and I want to try to score points for that letter.’ It was a smaller group that went, but the group that went, um, took advantage of it.”

Charlie Antonuk scored the lone win for the Hodag boys, taking first place in the pole vault (11 feet, 6 inches). Sophomore Kamden Kostrova scored top-five finishes in three events, taking runner-up in both the 110- and 300-meter hurdles and fifth in the pole vault. Elias Simonsen was third in the discus and fourth in the pole vault while Brock Sternitzky broke the 40-foot mark in a third-place showing in the shot put (40-8 1/2).

Michael Brunette was third in the 3,200 meters, Renin Craig took fourth in the 200, Wyatt Crowell was fourth in the 800, Michael Tredupp was fifth in the 400, senior Austin Sparling was fifth in the triple jump, and the Hodag boys were third in the 4x200 and fifth in the 4x100.

Tatiana Vadis won the girls’ shot put with a throw of 30-8 and added a fourth-place finish in the discus. Josie Stella also placed in the top five of both throwing events, with a second in the shot and a fifth in the disc. Emily Schiek led a 1-3-4 finish in the 3,200 meters with teammates Addie Olson and Hailey Novak. 

Addison Fish added third-place finishes in the long and triple jump, Freedom Gorden was fourth in the 200, Tori Stella took fourth in the triple jump and Gretchen Fiebke was fifth in the 800.

In general, Wyss said he was pleased with the number of strong performances and season bests that came from the group.

“You just kind of never know when those opportunities are going to come. So I’m glad that, that when they come we’re still able to take advantage of them,” he said. “That’s kind of been the theme for us all season, we’ve been able to, no matter what the situation is — whether it’s cold and rainy, or windy or whatever we’re in — we always tend to pull out some good performances.”

Regionals ahead

Attention for the squad now turns to today’s WIAA Division 2 regional in Medford. On paper, the Hodags should be in the mix for the regional titles on both the boys’ and girls’ sides — considering the nine-team field is the entire Great Northern Conference, plus Colby. However, Wyss said winning the meet is not necessarily the approach today. 

The postseason is about individual advancement. The top four finishers in each event from today’s meet move on to Friday’s sectional round in Rice Lake. From there, the top four finishers, plus anyone with performances among the 10 best overall in Division 2, qualify for the WIAA state track meet the following weekend in La Crosse. 

“You’re a little more strategic now, Wyss explained. “At conference, you’re just trying to hoard points, so you can kind of load people up in a way that you might not do that at regionals where you’re trying to run a really good time to advance onto sectionals and on the state.”

The Hodags have several athletes and relays that rank inside the top four in the regional, according to Athletic.net — 23 on the girls’ side and 16 on the boys’ side to be precise. For some of them, the decision will be which events will they choose. 

Aila Bergman, for instance, has the regionals’ best time in both the 100 and 300 hurdles — two events in which she has previously qualified for state. That leaves her with only two other events she can do at regionals — and only one running event. She could do the 200 meters, where she’s ranked second, or she could help the 4x400 relay as it looks to make a return trip to state. Meanwhile, in the field, while she has the regional’s best performance in both the long jump and triple jump, she would have to sacrifice at least one of those, if she’s doing three running events. 

Similarly, on the boys’ side, Avrom Barr has the regional’s best time in 800, 1,600 and 3,200, but he was also on the 4x400 and 4x800 relay teams when they posted the best marks in the regional. He can do only up to three of those five events today.

“Kind of the process is going through your group and seeing where everybody’s ranked in the in the regional and then in the sectional, kind of getting a feel of what could make it all the way, what could grow the distance, kind of plugging those pieces in first, seeing how they fit against each other,” Wyss said. “ … So once we get those, those top-level entries plugged in, then we kind of move on to the secondary ones that have a chance to advance, might score some points and, and then kind of fill it out from there. Things are looking good. We’re just hoping to get, compared to the rest of our regional, just hoping to get a really good amount of green onto the sectional meet.”

Today’s meet starts at 4 p.m. at Raider Field in Medford.

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].