Talent remains, talent is added; Raiders think big
MEDFORD GYMNASTICS PREVIEW
The Medford gymnastics program is continuing to think big as the 2022-23 season begins, partly because it has to during the regular season.
After four straight championships and five in the last six years in the Great Northern Conference’s Small Division, the Raiders have been moved to the Large Division this year, where the competition certainly will ramp up a notch or two, but the rewards for success might also be greater at season’s end. The fourteam division includes Marshfield, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids.
Antigo and Ashland move from Large to Small, joining Rhinelander, Mosinee and Lakeland.
Medford’s seventh-year head coach Steve Cain said the move was partly a result of Medford’s combined enrollment with Colby as this is a co-op program. And, there’s little doubt, the Raiders’ recent success and, quite possibly, future success was a factor as well.
As it is, the Raiders are excited about the challenge of trying to knock off the big dogs in the area and of continuing the program’s post-season success as they aim for a fifth straight team berth in the WIAA Division 2 state championships.
“It’s going to be a challenge this season, but it’s a challenge that we’re ready for,” Cain said Monday.
The Raiders get the new season started Saturday when they host their annual Hot Cocoa Invitational at Medford Area Elementary School starting at 9 a.m. The Raiders will again welcome Marshfield, Mosinee, Rice Lake and Tomah for the meet, which will be followed by a club meet hosted by Medford’s Rainbow Gymnastics Club. Medford won last year’s meet by 0.95 points over Marshfield.
The core of this season’s team is centered around six returning letter winners from a team that won the program’s third straight WIAA Division 2 sectional title and finished seventh out of 10 teams at the state meet in Wisconsin Rapids. The Raiders did suffer one key loss to graduation in Makala Ulrich, the two-time GNC Small Division Gymnast of the Year, last year’s conference beam and floor champion and the 2022 sectional champion in the floor exercise.
Those half-dozen returning gymnasts are seniors Kate Malchow and Avery Purdy, juniors Kyla Krause and Ellison Carbaugh and sophomores Veronica Mateer and Shayla Radlinger. All of them filled spots in the post-season lineup. Malchow and Krause were all-around gymnasts in the line at the end of the year.
Malchow returns as a three-year letter winner and now holds two school records that she broke last year on the balance beam (9.25) and the uneven bars (8.85). She ended the year as a GNC Small Division champion on the bars and runner-up on beam, the sectional champion on bars and beam as well as its all-around champion with a personal-best score of 35.275. She set her bars record while placing ninth at state.
Krause also qualified for state as an all-around and remains the school’s record-holder on the vault with a 9.4 she hit during the sectional meet of her freshman season. She topped out at 9.35 last year, also at the sectional, which won the competition. She was the GNC Small Division’s vault champion at 9.3 and the all-around runner-up while placing second on floor and bars. Krause was the sectional runner-up on bars (8.1) and tied for ninth at state on vault with a 9.017.
Purdy adds a solid veteran presence with state experience on the balance beam and on bars. She qualified for state on beam as an individual last season.
Carbaugh was in last year’s state lineup on vault and looks to fill more varsity spots this year. Mateer has all-around potential and competed at state for Medford last year on vault (7.633), floor (7.767) and on the beam (8.067). Radlinger filled key roles for the Raiders last year on the bars, earning an 8.117 at state, and in the floor exercise, earning a 7.2 at state and peaking at 8.1 during the season.
Junior Kaileigh Mientke could be a key contributor as well after posting some strong JV scores last year on beam, vault and floor. Sophomore Sadie Moore looks to contribute more after missing most of last year due to injury.
Additional depth is gained this year with freshmen Delaina Meyer and Bridget Cloud, both of whom are Colby students. Meyer came up through Medford’s club while Cloud competed as a youth with Marshfield’s Hub City club.
Those top 10 form a talented pool to start building a lineup from. The program also has an incredible eight foreign exchange students this season for a grand total of 18 athletes. That too will create some lineup challenges for Cain and second-year assistant Jaylene Lennet even with the JV opportunities Medford will have.
“We have the meet this Saturday, and we’ll take the ones that ended the season last year and kinda put them in that lineup starting this year,” Cain said. “But let’s put it this way. In each event, we’ve got a couple, two or three girls in each event that are almost dead even for that fifth spot. People say it’s a good problem. It is, no doubt. As a coach, you want to balance out what is a good problem as far as level of talent and where they should be and trying to make sure the other ones get their chance to show what they can do.
“I’m going to be closer to watching that level of talent from meet to meet and if I have to adjust every meet as to where that fourth or fifth spot might be, I might have to do that because that’s how talented these girls are,” he added. “Every girl except for our foreign exchange kids are club kids. Every single one. That means they all are equally talented.”
Cain said the foreign exchange group has some talent as well that might surprise some people if or when they get their chances to compete. There are three students from Spain –– Adriana Vazquez Arias, Marina Agudo Garcia-Manzano and Alejandra Jover –– and Sigourney Bielert and Leni Wilhelm are from Germany. Eduarda Siqueira and Pamella Vieira are from Brazil and Amelia Susacasa is from Chile.
While Cain foresees switching things up early in the season to give athletes their shots, it will be important on the varsity end of things to nail down a lineup by the second half of the season. The chase for the Large Division title will include home dual meets with Stevens Point on Dec. 20 and Wisconsin Rapids on Feb. 2 and a trip to Marshfield on Jan. 12. Marshfield hosts the conference meet for both divisions on Feb. 18.
Cain believes his girls never took opponents in the Small Division lightly the past few years, but it will be different now knowing it will take their best efforts in each Large Division dual and in the final meet to win.
“I don’t think they walked into it last year saying we don’t have to work so hard because we got it,” Cain said. “Sometimes it can bring down an athlete if they don’t have that challenge for them or if they just compete against themselves and their teammates. This year they’re going to get that challenge. Wisconsin Rapids is really good. So is Marshfield. We were outscoring them last year. Who else is good? Stevens Point. But we were also outscoring them. Now they have to continue that outscoring going into this season and I know they can.”
The field for the Feb. 24 WIAA Division 2 sectional meet in Antigo includes familiar foes like the host Red Robins, Rhinelander, Mosinee, Lakeland and Ashland. Rice Lake and Bloomer-Colfax is also part of this year’s grouping.
The state meet on March 3-4 returns to its familiar format of team competition on Friday and individual competition on Saturday.
