Doubles teams, Ruesch finish with each getting a sectional win

WIAA DIV. 2 GIRLS TENNIS

The season ended for Medford’s girls tennis team at Thursday’s WIAA Division 2 Regis-McDonell sectional meet, but it did so on a positive note as three seniors went out as winners and a sophomore and a junior having success to build on when they return next fall.

The sophomore, Audrey Ruesch, capped a strong finish to her 14-11 season by playing for the sectional championship in flight-three singles.

In the semifinals, Ruesch took care of Amery senior Annie Zinn 6-1, 6-2 to earn her seventh win in a stretch of eight matches. Four of those wins came in rematches with players she had lost to earlier in the fall in straight sets. Her semifinal win set up another such rematch with junior Ashley Chilson of Regis-McDonell in the championship match. Unfortunately, this was the one match Ruesch was not able to even the score as Chilson (30-2) won the flight’s sectional title by a score of 6-1, 6-0.

Still, it was an impressive run to end the year and hopefully a sign of things to come for Ruesch and the Raiders. With seniors graduating in the other three singles flights, she would appear to be the frontrunner to fill the number-one spot next year.

Chilson got the flight final by beating Rice Lake’s Ayla Zuzek 6-0, 6-1 in the other semifinal. Zinn (13-8) defeated Zuzek (9-8) by a score of 6-3, 6-3 in the thirdplace match.

The number-two doubles team of seniors Eryka Seidl and Alyssa Brandner entered the sectional meet with a chance to qualify for the state tournament if they could find a way to win the championship.

Those hopes were dashed in the semifinals when Rice Lake’s Kendra Richter and Emily Scheu beat them 6-1, 6-3. But the Raiders won a match they’ll remember to end their year and tennis careers. In the third-place match, Seidl and Brandner defeated Osceola’s Brooke McDonald and Olivia See in three sets. The first set went the distance with the Raiders taking the tiebreaker 7-2 to win the set 7-6. McDonald and See won a second set that almost went the distance as well 7-5. In a 10-point, third-set tiebreaker, Brandner and Seidl emerged as 10-7 winners to finish the year 13-8 together. Osceola’s team finished 19-8.

Altoona juniors Sofia Bach and Katelyn Beltz (22-5) beat McDonald and See 6-4, 6-2 in the semifinals and edged Richter and Scheu (12-4) by a score of 4-6, 6-2, 10-5 in the flight championship.

Senior Chloe Werner and junior Madison Clarkson dropped their semifinal match to a solid Rice Lake combination of senior Alyssa Stanford and freshman Halle Husak 6-2, 6-3, but the Raiders’ duo finished on a high note, taking the thirdplace match over Baldwin-Woodville’s Kennedy Wang and Hailey Schodeberg 6-2, 6-3.

Werner and Clarkson finished 10-3. They played one early-season match together and then teamed up for good starting with Medford’s Great Northern Conference dual meet at Columbus Catholic. Two of their three losses came in the GNC tournament and their last one came in Thursday’s semifinal.

Stanford and Husak (13-7) won the flight championship, downing Altoona’s Ryanna Hesselink and Keyliana Desantis in the final 6-2, 7-5. The Altoona team (14-4) beat Wang and Schodeberg (9-5) by a score of 6-3, 6-1 in the other semifinal.

Altoona compiled 39 team points between subsectional and sectional competition to earn a spot in the WIAA Division 2 team state tournament to be held Oct. 22 in Madison. Regis-McDonell was second with 33 points, followed by Rice Lake (26), Osceola (23), Baldwin-Woodville (19) and Columbus Catholic (18). Columbus Catholic, however, is the only GNC team to send players to state. Maria Laura Garcia-Moya qualified at numberone singles and the team of Declyn Tracy and Maria Elizabeth Garcia-Moya qualified at number-one doubles.

Medford finished with 16 points to place seventh, followed by Newman Catholic (14), Amery (11), Ellsworth (10), Mondovi (6) and Barron (2). Phillips, Antigo, Ashland, Unity-Luck and Bloomer did not score.