After one-year hiatus, Medford brings back boys swim team
MEDFORD BOYS SWIM PREVIEW
After a one-year shutdown due to low participation numbers, the Medford boys swim program is back this winter with nine new faces on the 10-man roster and a new head coach.
The Raiders resume operations this winter under Terry Werner, an art teacher at Medford Area Senior High but also a former Raider swimmer. The 1999 MASH graduate closed his career back then by joining teammates John Schoofs, Adam Flood and Luke Dixon in a fifthplace finish at the WIAA Division 2 state meet in the 200-yard freestyle relay in a time of 1:32.55.
“That’s memory for me,” Werner said Tuesday morning, hours before the Raiders opened the new season with an 85-57 Great Northern Conference loss at Tomahawk. “That’s kind of why I decided to throw my hat in the ring for being a coach. It’s good to get back in the MASH pool. It’s a different side of things being a coach for sure, but I feel like it hasn’t taken too long for me to shift gears into it.”
Medford will compete in the home pool tonight, Thursday, when the team hosts the Shawano Hawks at 5:30 p.m.
Werner’s task isn’t unlike what Medford boys coaches before him often faced. This year’s team doesn’t feature an abundance of competitive swim experience and has some swimmers learning from scratch. That’s not overly surprising considering Medford lost six of the seven swimmers that earned letters following the 2020-21 season, which partially led to last year’s decision to not offer swimming for a year in hopes that numbers would rebound.
“It’s going good,” Werner said. “I feel like the team has a real strong bond. It is a mixed batch between MASH students, homeschooled students and RVA students and what’s nice to see is they’re all getting along really well. They’re all supporting each other and getting to know each other really well, so I feel really good about that part of it.”
The other part he feels good about is that the crew is learning relatively quickly while focusing on the fundamentals in the first two weeks of practice.
“Most are pretty new to it,” Werner said. “Some didn’t go through Swim Club either. But what’s nice is they’re picking it up really fast with the flip turns, the techniques and all of that kind of stuff. I feel like that’s going a little bit quicker than I anticipated. They’re picking up all of that stuff real quick.”
The roster includes three seniors, Dylan Kraemer, Ervin Ulrich and Yubin Yonatan Murillo Aguirre, better known as “Jimmy,” who starred for the Raiders on the soccer pitch this fall.
Kraemer is the lone team member who has been on previous Raider squads as he earned letters in his freshman and sophomore seasons. Kraemer was an improving distance swimmer, often competing in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyles as the 2020-21 season ended and it’s a role Werner sees he enjoys. Werner added Kraemer does swim all of the other strokes and could be used in the individual medley or any of the strokes.
Werner said Ulrich, who ran cross country for Medford in the fall, has a good grasp of swim techniques, while Murillo Aguirre is completely new to the sport but is among those picking things up quickly.
Brothers Hunter and Charles “Silas” Briggs make up the junior class, while a third brother, Hudson Briggs, is one of the team’s two sophomores. Mason Reimann is the other and he’s shown solid potential in practice, Werner said. His older brother Marcus, a 2017 graduate, had some good seasons in the program.
The three freshmen are McKay Gurney, Roger Mann and Logan Rouiller. Gurney, Werner said, has shown ability in all of the strokes in the early going.
Werner said overall this group of guys is excited to be the ones to give the program a reboot.
“It’s definitely exciting,” he said. “I feel like the boys like to have fun in the pool, but they’re taking it seriously. There’s some natural leaders. I feel like Dylan has stepped up and is our team captain. The other seniors with a little more experience are also leading the way with some of the younger, newer swimmers. (Tuesday’s) our first meet. We’re excited. We have butterflies. We’re all pumped up.”
Goals for the year are simple –– get better with each practice, each week, each meet. The other big one is to legally complete races, which, in a sport where most teams don’t sport large rosters anymore, will be key to scoring points.
“We’re working on fundamentals,” Werner said. “I feel like making sure that we don’t disqualify is a big deal. Some of the teams that we go up against are smaller teams as well, like Tomahawk. As long as we stay focused on completing each race, we should do really well.
“Our goals are to improve,” he added. “We have a pretty nice practice and workout schedule. We do a pool practice and then we do a dryland workout too. I feel like they’re all getting better right away in terms of conditioning. I think we’re mostly focused on individual goals where we’re just going to try to improve our times and get better at technique. That’s probably our number-one focus. Then after that, of course, is just performance at meets.”
With Medford back in the mix, the Great Northern Conference is back up to its full group of six teams. Antigo folded for a year two seasons ago, but the Red Robins resurfaced last year. Rhinelander has handily won the last four conference championships and would figure to be the favorite to make it five in a row. Lakeland, Shawano and Tomahawk fill out the league list.
There is a new twist to the conference schedule with double-duals in January. Medford will host one Jan. 12 with Lakeland and Shawano. They’ll head to Rhinelander for a double-dual on Jan. 5 and to Shawano for another on Jan. 26.
