GNC TRACK & FIELD - Boys come so close to title; girls finish fourth in the GNC
With eight conference championship performances, a second and six thirds Thursday, the Medford Raiders couldn’t have done much more in their effort to finally bring home a boys team title in track and field.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t quite enough.
The Rhinelander Hodags held off the Raiders 164-155 to earn that program’s second Great Northern Conference championship in four years. The Hodags were simply too deep in the distance events and the throws and those advantages offset the edges Medford had in sprints, hurdles and jumps.
Medford finished second for the ninth time since the GNC was formed in the 2008-09 school year. The boys program’s last conference title came in the Lumberjack Conference in 1989.
Individually in the meet, which was postponed two days due to inclement weather on May 20, the Raiders got big nights from Evan Paul and Will Daniels, who each won two individual events, individual wins from Gage Losiewicz and Paxton Rothmeier and two relay championships.
Rhinelander and Medford were clearly the two best boys teams in the field Thursday as host Mosinee finished a distant third with 110 points. Last year’s co-champions, Lakeland and Northland Pines, tied for fourth with 91 points, while Tomahawk had 50 and Antigo scored 27.
Paul, a senior, scored 34 points in his four individual events, finishing in the top three in all of them.
He and Rothmeier recorded their fastest times ever in the 100-meter dash preliminaries at 11.42 and 11.62 seconds to put themselves as the top two seeds in the final. Paul won the final at 11.51 seconds, 0.03 seconds ahead of Eli Kerner of Northland Pines. Rothmeier finished third in 11.71 seconds. Paul also took second in the 200-meter dash, just behind Kerner. Medford’s Sawyer Hoops was sixth and Caleb Scoles finished eighth.
In the field, Paul won the long jump competition with his best leap carrying 20 feet, 11 inches, a new personal record. He beat Mosinee’s Omar Ingram by 6.5 inches to win the title. In the high jump, Paul was 2 inches off his personal best, going 5-10 to place third. Ingram won at 6-2, while Rhinelander’s Truman Lamers hit 6 feet. Paul got third ahead of Lakeland’s Braydon Loduha and Christoffer Martin, both of whom also hit 5-10.
Daniels, a junior, swept the championships in the hurdles races. He defended his 110-meter high hurdle title of a year ago with a winning time of 16.66 seconds in the final. He beat Mosinee’s Zander Deiniger by 0.87 seconds. Raider freshman Luke Klapatauskas was third in 18.41 seconds in the final, bumping up two spots and 0.36 seconds from the prelims.
Daniels led Medford’s 21-point effort in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles with a win in 42.08 seconds, 1.12 seconds ahead of Rhinelander’s Ryley Hull. Klapatauskas took third at 43.4 seconds, easily a seasonbest time, and Rothmeier, running this race for just the second time this spring, took fourth in 44.52 seconds.
In another new event for him, Rothmeier won the triple jump championship. He tied Rhinelander’s Myles Eagleson for first in the preliminary round with a jump of 40-1. He then got off a jump of 41-3 in the finals to win by an inch over Lakeland’s Marshall Holmquist and Mosinee’s Spencer Lemke. Eagleson was fourth but improved by 3.5 inches in the finals. Medford’s Damien Dums got the last spot in the finals and stayed at ninth place at 37-6.5.
Losiewicz, a senior, won his second straight GNC pole vault championship. He cleared 12-6 and won the tiebreaker over Northland Pines’ Morgan DePuydt for the top spot. Losiewicz and DePuydt were 6 inches higher than Rhinelander’s Ayden Myers. Raider sophomore Jordan Lavin smashed his previous best height by 18 inches, getting to 11-6 to claim fourth place.
Medford’s first relay win of the meet came in the 800-meter event where Sawyer Hoops, Hayden Koester, Daniels and Levi Zuleger teamed up to win in 1:34.98, the fastest time a Medford group has had this spring. They beat Rhinelander by 0.41 seconds and Lakeland by 0.61 seconds to win it. Hoops, Anthony Seidel, Caleb Scoles and Koester ended the meet by winning the 1,600meter relay in 3:38.15, 0.7 seconds ahead of Antigo and 2.59 seconds ahead of Rhinelander.
Colton Long, Peyton Ried, Zuleger and Rothmeier took third in the 400-meter relay at 46.45 seconds, trailing Rhinelander (44.92) and Lakeland (46.13). The 3,200-meter team of Angus Hamland, Evan Pagel, Ayden Tyznik and Judah Wipf was sixth in 9:21.07. Tomahawk won that race in 8:39.86.
Senior Brandon Curtis scored 10 points in distance races. He placed third in the 3,200-meter run with a personal-best time of 10:36.37. Out of nine runners, only Rhinelander’s Greyson Gremban (10:24.38) and Avrom Barr (10:28.82) were better. Curtis was fifth in the 1,600meter run at 4:54.2. Gremban (4:39.32) and Barr (4:42.18) were the top two finishers in that race too.
Scoles, a senior, placed twice taking fifth in the 400-meter dash at 53.57 seconds to add to his eighth-place 200 finish. Koester was ninth at 56.35 seconds. Seidel finished 12th in the 800 at 2:14.27.
Senior Erich Moretz got off a seasonbest throw of 46-4 in the shot put competition, putting him in fourth place. That throw came in the preliminaries and had him in third going into the finals, where Rhinelander’s Reid Schultz passed him with a throw of 47-11.75. Rhinelander’s Logan Schwinger (49-3.5) and Mosinee’s Jackson Lindell (48-4.75) were first and second. Raider sophomore Logan Langdon got the eighth-place point in the discus with a new best throw of 1201.
Stokes sets record
The Medford girls did not win any individual championships while taking fourth with 77.5 points, but junior Rivalee Stokes had a night to remember with personal-best throws in the shot put and discus.
In fact, her top discus throw of the night carried 123 feet even, giving her the school record as she surpassed the mark of 120-9 set in 2019 by Leah Leonard. She had finished a foot behind the record in Medford’s previous meet at Marshfield May 16. Stokes finished second Thursday, just behind Rhinelander’s Libbey Buchmann, who set a GNC record with a throw of 126-2.
In the shot put, Stokes extended her personal record by a foot while taking third place at 31-11.5. Buchmann won that with a throw of 34-7 in the finals. Rhinelander’s Jalyn Zadnik was second at 32-10.75. Raider Avery Losiewicz was 11th in the preliminaries at 24-9.25.
Junior Lindsay Kahn gave Medford a full night’s work in the distance races and produced 22 points for the team. First, she was the 1,600-meter runner-up with a personal-best time of 5:42.42. Kahn was 3.79 seconds behind Antigo’s Lillian L’Esperance and 1.72 seconds ahead of Lakeland’s Ada Ernst. Kahn then took third in the 800-meter run at 2:33.02 behind Lakeland’s Stella Meza (2:25.97) and Rhinelander’s Macy Myers (2:26.06). Raider senior Ella Dassow was eighth at 2:46.84. Not long after that, Kahn took on the 3,200-meter challenge and comfortably settled into second place at 13:17.55, 20.37 seconds ahead of Tomahawk’s Lydia Shaney. L’Epserance won in 12:56.67.
Losiewicz also scored 22 points individually. The sophomore equaled her best height in the pole vault at 10 feet, which put her second behind Myers, who set a GNC record at 11-3. Losiewicz won the tiebreaker for second over Rhinelander’s Emeline Hintz. Raiders Adalyn Dittrich (7-6) and Emily Kiselicka (6-6) also tied their personal bests. Dittrich tied for sixth place and Kiselicka was ninth.
Also in the field, senior Toryn Rau placed 11th in the long jump at 13-4.25.
In the 300-meter hurdles, Losiewicz added another second-place finish at 49.76 seconds, 2.79 seconds behind Rhinelander’s Aila Bergman, who set a GNC record at 46.97 seconds. Dittrich was 10th in a season-best 59.09 seconds. Losiewicz was second in the 100-meter high hurdle prelims at 17.22 seconds and lowered her time to 17.08 seconds in the final. That was good for third behind Bergman (16.2) and Rhinelander’s Averie West (17.01). Freshman Cora Semrau got to the final and placed seventh at 19.88 seconds and Dittrich was 10th at 21.03 seconds.
Aliyah Pilgrim was seventh in the 400meter dash at 1:04.33, a season-best by 0.03 seconds, and Autumn Cooley was ninth at 1:09.42. Pilgrim was 10th in the 200-meter dash at 29.46 seconds and Stokes was ninth in the 100-meter dash prelims at 13.58 seconds. She qualified for the final but did not race in it.
Both of Medford’s relay entries placed third. Ella Dassow, Carly Koski, Willow Dassow and Cooley set their season-best time at 10:57.88 while finishing behind Lakeland (10:21.44) and Tomahawk (10:31.93) in the 3,200-meter relay. Alexis Zuleger, Willow Dassow, Cooley and Pilgrim finished in 4:33.28 in the 1,600meter relay, finishing behind Rhinelander (4:17.17) and Tomahawk (4:31.32).
Rhinelander won its first-ever GNC team title, scoring 174 points. Lakeland edged defending champion Tomahawk 143-142 for second. Mosinee (68), Northland Pines (44.5) and Antigo (29) finished behind Medford.
