Season ends with more positive results for Raider swimmers

WIAA DIV. 2 BOYS SWIMMING

The Medford boys swim team’s successful return to competition in 2022-23 ended Saturday with the tapering process producing yet another day of significant time drops and a seventh-place finish that beat three of the Raiders’ rivals in the Great Northern Conference.

The Raiders scored 131 team points at the WIAA Division 2 Ashwaubenon sectional, good enough to beat league rivals Antigo (115), Shawano (104) and Lakeland (27), who finished eighth, ninth and 11th as well as Green Bay Notre Dame.

GNC champion Rhinelander won the meet with 419 points and is certainly in contention to win the state championship Friday at Waukesha South. Ashwaubenon (341), Menomonie (218), Rice Lake (217), Tomahawk (182), and Wausau East (164) were the rest of the teams finishing ahead of the Raiders.

Considering the Raiders didn’t even field a team due to low numbers last year and the inexperience they started this year with, the team’s progress under first-year head coach Terry Werner was quite impressive.

The highest placement for Medford in Saturday’s meet came from the 400-yard freestyle relay team of Hudson Briggs, Logan Rouiller, Ervin Ulrich and Dylan Kraemer, who took sixth in a time of 4:23.89 that was nearly eight seconds faster than that group’s previous seasonbest.

Medford’s 200-yard medley relay team started the meet with a seventh-place finish. Jimmy Murillo Aguirre, Naut van Meurs, Mason Reimann and Kraemer finished in 2:09.2, 2.56 seconds behind sixth-place Antigo. Reimann, Hudson Briggs, van Meurs and Ulrich were ninth in the 200-yard freestyle relay at 1:51.61, a time that was 2.35 seconds faster than their previous best of the season.

Individually, Rouiller, a freshman, earned Medford’s highest finish by taking seventh out of 14 entrants in the 500yard freestyle. He finished in 6:12.93, cutting 11.46 seconds off his previous best in an event he didn’t start swimming until late in the season. Ulrich, a senior, finished 11th in 6:30.08.

Murillo Aguirre, a senior, earned a top-10 finish in the 100-yard backstroke by crushing his previous personal record by 5.2 seconds with his time of 1:16.43. He was only 1.45 seconds behind eighthplace swimmer Garrett Tomczyk of Antigo. Rouiller was 11th in 1:17.72, cutting 2.06 seconds to set his new personal-best time, and Roger Mann was 15th in 1:30.21, lowering his time by nearly three seconds.

Reimann, a sophomore, placed 12th in the individual medley, an event where eight sectional swimmers qualified for state. Reimann cut 3.47 seconds off his previous best time by finishing in 2:32.86. The state-qualifying cutoff was the 2:07.38 posted by eighth-place finisher Alexander Smits of Ashwaubenon. Rhinelander’s Daniel Gillingham won in 2:00.18.

Reimann added an 11th-place time of 1:09.15 in the 100-yard butterfly, shaving 2.55 seconds off his previous best and beating five other swimmers. He was 2.18 seconds behind Shawano’s Daniel Bergmann, who got the last top-10 spot.

Kraemer, a senior, closed out his career with two 12th-place finishes. The first came in the 200-yard freestyle, where he lowered his time by 5.55 seconds to 2:20.7. Teammate Hudson Briggs was 14th in 2:28.57, chopping his time by 5.76 seconds. Kraemer later swam the 100-yard freestyle in 1:04.71, clipping 2.31 seconds off his previous season-best. Hudson Briggs was 18th in 1:09.96 and Silas Briggs was 20th in 1:12.34, lowering his time by nearly four seconds.

An exchange student from the Netherlands, van Meurs, a senior, cut a big chunk out of his 100-yard breaststroke time while taking 13th in 1:24.37. His previous best was 1:29.26. Hunter Briggs, a junior, was 15th in 1:28.76. In the 50-yard freestyle, van Meurs cut 0.92 seconds while placing 18th out of 28 sprinters in 27.04 seconds. Murillo Aguirre cut 0.7 seconds while taking 25th in 30.14 seconds, Mann shaved 0.24 seconds while taking 26th in 31.15 seconds and Silas Briggs sliced 1.53 seconds while placing 27th in 31.58 seconds.

Champions in each event automatically qualified for the state meet. The top 12 non-winning times statewide in each event also qualified. Rhinelander pushed an amazing 19 of its 21 entries to state, while Ashwaubenon is sending 11 entries to state.

Tomahawk Zach Hanse is the GNC’s other state qualifier. He won the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:00.48 and took second in the 200-yard individual medley at 2:00.83.