Boys looking solid; girls looking for one more

HAWKS CROSS COUNTRY PREVIEW

Things are looking up for the boys team, while the girls are starting over from close to ground zero as the Prentice- Rib Lake Hawks get their 2022 cross country season underway.

Seniors, sophomores and a couple of freshmen fill the opening day boys roster, while the girls are one short of team status with four runners, three of whom will be new to varsity competition.

Opening day is today, Thursday, as the Hawks host their annual Timm’s Hill Invitational. Medford, Athens, Phillips, Thorp, Ladysmith, Flambeau and Butternut will fill out a full eight-team field on one of the state’s toughest courses to run, especially at the start of a season.

Lynn Granberg, a familiar face with the program in recent years is the lead coach this year from Prentice, while Noah Behling became a late addition from Rib Lake to the coaching staff following the resignation of Gabe Sandoval this summer. Behling, a 2017 Marshfield graduate and a cross country runner in that program in his high school days, is the middle school social studies teacher in Rib Lake.

Josh Isaacson heads the middle school program, which has close to 20 runners between the two schools.

Granberg said Wednesday the cooperation and camaraderie has been a highlight of the first week and a half of the season.

“We’ve been practicing together. Rib Lake has been driving out or we bring our kids out there,” Granberg said. “We’re working together instead of separately, which is really nice. We do that all the time. We make sure that either they come here or we go there or meet in the middle, so it’s been working very well cooperatively for cross country.

“The kids get along with each other. They mix and mingle. We’ve been working really well together along with Noah Behling to make sure we have our bases covered.”

Six of the nine boys who competed with the Hawks last fall are back with the team this season and are striving to improve upon what they did in 2021. There are three seniors, but for the most part, this is still a pretty young group.

Ryan Buehler and Ben Petersen lead the way, while third senior is Nolan Sarkkinen of Prentice, who ran as a freshman, played football for two falls and now has returned to cross country.

Buehler and Petersen both finished last year hovering around the 20-minute mark and Granberg said the coaches are anxious to see how much they can knock off this fall. She said Buehler, in particular is really coming on as he enters his final season in the sport.

“Ryan has been looking amazingly strong,” Granberg said. “We’re looking forward to seeing how he’s going to run this year. It’s the same with Ben. Ryan really took it seriously this summer and I’m very excited for him. I’m glad Nolan is back out. He’ll be a good asset to the team.”

The key to Prentice-Rib Lake’s team success may be the continued progress of the sophomore group that certainly made strides toward the end of last fall.

Jack Regier leads that group. He finished the year with a bang by posting the Hawks’ top time at the WIAA Division 3 sectional at 19:31.7, almost 20 seconds ahead of senior Adam Granberg, the team’s top runner throughout the year. Regier placed 30th out of 107 boys finishers and he was 31st out of 60 runners at the Marawood Conference meet, which was also run at Phillips.

“Jack Regier really came on at the end of the season last year,” coach Granberg said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how he will do.”

Elijah Scott and Matthew Schmidt also made the sectional lineup last fall with Scott placing 60th in 20:43.3 and Schmidt placing 75th at 21:59.6. Schmidt’s best time of his freshman season was 20:45.9 at Auburndale. Connor Highfill is also back. He finished his year running in the Marawood’s JV race and cut over four minutes from his opening time of the year at Timm’s Hill to his best time of the year, which was 22:54.2 at Auburndale.

Eliah Harding and Evan Lord are key freshman additions after they were leaders on the Hawks’ middle school teams that won several meets in 2021. A third freshman, Nick Nikkila, joins the program as a new runner.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what those freshmen bring to the table,” Granberg said. “They were really good runners for the middle school and they’re going to make us just a little bit stronger at the varsity level. We’re pretty excited. The boys are going to be competitive.”

Nearly everybody graduated from the 2021 girls team, leaving sophomore Amy Espinoza as the lone returning runner. She ended last season with her best time of 30:14.5 in the Marawood’s JV race. Emma Scott is a first-year senior, while Lauren Schutt is a first-year sophomore.

The team’s most polished runner is freshman Kylie Orysen, who ran for four years with the Hawks’ middle school team.

“She will be fun to watch to see how she works in this season,” Granberg said. The Hawks hope to recruit at least one more runner to be able to score as a team. Granberg said it will be fun to watch the girls improve as they work through the season.

“It is so neat to watch them through the season,” Granberg said. “I told them (Tuesday) night at practice that at the end of the season you’re going to be like, ‘I just ran 6 miles, whoa, and it was easy.’ That’s one neat thing about this sport.”

Prentice-Rib Lake will have plenty of opportunities to test itself and improve before the Marawood Conference and WIAA Division 3 Phillips sectional meets arrive Oct. 13 and 22 with most invitationals being on familiar ground at Marawood sites. The Hawks will again run in the huge Smiley Invite in Wausau and another large meet in Barron. A new large Saturday meet in Flambeau also appears on this year’s schedule.