Medford girls take team title; many solid efforts on cold day

MEDFORD T&F INVITATIONAL

Temperatures dropped from 80 in the first home meet April 13 to about 40 for Tuesday’s Medford Track and Field Invitational, but holding a trophy at the end of the meet made the chill worth it for the Raider girls.

Medford got another school record from Jaylin Machon in the pole vault and got scoring in just about every event to pull ahead of the pack in a competitive nine-team girls meet. Eight of the teams scored at least 62 points with Medford’s 111 getting the Raiders past Marathon (94), Stratford (88.5) and Wittenberg-Birnamwood (88) for the championship.

The Gilman Pirates were that eighthplace team with 62 points as they got seven top-three finishes from their standout trio of Bailey Angell, Gracie Tallier and Claire Drier. Angell easily won the shot put and discus for the Pirates’ two event victories.

Machon had little competition in winning the girls pole vault competition, so her objective became trying to beat her recent school record of 10 feet, 3 inches. She did that late in the meet by clearing the bar at 10-6, 3 feet higher than her nearest competitors. The junior added a fourth-place finish in the 100-meter high hurdles at 17.8 seconds, while Drier was fifth for Gilman in 18.7 seconds.

The Raiders only won one more event and that came at the end of the meet with a time of 4:26.89 from their 1,600-meter relay team of Aliyah Pilgrim, Lillie Gleichauf, Bryn Fronk and Meredith Richter. Pilgrim and Gleichauf kept the Raiders on Rhinelander’s heels and Fronk and Richter took care of business at the end, giving Medford a 6.8-second winning margin.

Angell’s wins for Gilman started with a toss of 35-3 in the shot put, which was an inch shy of beating Marathon’s Ashley Gertschen by 6 feet. Medford got 11 key points in that event with Lindsey Klapatauskas taking fourth at 28-2, Ra-chel Wesle taking fifth at 26-8 and Rivalee Stokes placing seventh at 26-2. Those were season-best throws for Wesle and Stokes and Klapatauskas was 4 inches behind hers. Angell’s best throw in the discus carried 110-3, well ahead of Gertschen’s distance of 91-7. Stokes took fourth at 80-3.5, improving by more than 3 feet over the first home meet.

Richter added 16 points with two second-place finishes. Her first was in the 1,600-meter run, where she finished in 5:16.16 and teammate Lindsay Kahn was third in 5:49.42. Richter gave Northland Pines star Nora Gremban a respectable challenge, trailing by 5.39 seconds at the finish line. Richter pushed another star athlete, Wittenberg-Birnamwood’s Reese Rogowski, in the 400-meter dash with her time of 1:02.29. She was 1.46 seconds behind. Amy Espinoza was 10th for Medford at a season-best 1:17.02.

Relays were a key part of Medford’s scoring. Ella Daniels, Gleichauf, Ella Dassow and Kahn started the meet with a time of 11:02.54 in the 3,200-meter relay, good for second behind Stratford’s time of 10:50.32.

In the 400-meter relay, Klapatauskas, Alexis Zuleger, Pilgrim and Machon got into a race that went to the last inch with Stratford winning by 0.01 seconds in 54.81 seconds. Zuleger, Autumn Cooley, Riley Clark and Brenley Beran took third in the 800-meter relay at 2:03.94, trailing Marathon (1:56.06) and Antigo (2:01.25).

Daniels (2:48.73) and Gleichauf (2:52.21) got the fourth- and sixth-place points in the 800-meter run, while Espinoza was 11th in 3:10.2. Gleichauf and Espinoza’s times were season bests. Daniels added a sixth-place finish in the long jump at 139.25. Stacy Stolp was 10th at 13-6, but she made her mark in Tuesday’s triple jump competition, placing fourth at 28-5.5, while Klapatauskas was seventh at 26-9.

Dassow pushed to a fifth-place finish in the 3,200-meter run at 13:53.9 and Pilgrim got the fifth-place points in the 200-meter dash at a season-best 29.36 seconds.

The 200-meter dash was one of the three events where Tallier scored big for Gilman. Three of Rogowski’s four event wins in the meet bumped Tallier to second place. Tallier finished the 200 in 27.04 seconds, 0.49 seconds behind Rogowski. Tallier ran the 100-meter dash in 13.23 seconds to fall 0.08 seconds behind Rogowski. And in the long jump, Tallier went 15-3.5 and Drier was third at 15-0.25 to give the Pirates 14 points. Rogowski won that at 15-11.25.

Drier added a second-place time of 51.52 seconds in the 300-meter hurdles, improving by 1.07 seconds over her outdoor opener in Gilman on April 13. Gilman’s Jaylen Copenhaver tied her season- best height of 4-2 in the high jump and ran the 200-meter dash in 30.54 seconds and Kyra Rabuck lowered her time to 15.79 seconds in the 100-meter dash.

Northland Pines outscored Rhinelander 73.5-65.5 in the race for fifth in the team standings, Stanley-Boyd scored 65 points to nudge past Gilman and Antigo (46.5) was ninth.

Three wins for Raiders

Competition was also tight atop Tuesday’s boys team standings. Stanley-Boyd held off Marathon 120-118.5 to win it, while Stratford (107) and Medford (104) weren’t far behind.

Medford did its damage despite having a handful of athletes sitting this one out with various ailments, though the Raiders did get one key athlete back, senior Jose “Mark” Herrera, who got key fifth-place points in the long jump (18-3) and seventh-place points in the 400-meter dash (57.96).

The boys had a bit more success getting event wins, earning three of them. Gage Losiewicz completed Medford’s pole vault sweep by clearing 12-6. He won a tiebreaker over Stanley-Boyd’s Zack Boes. Josh Clark used a last-lap push to pass Antigo’s Logan Higgins and win the 1,600-meter run by a 2.79-second margin in 4:40.43, cutting more than eight seconds from the first home meet, while teammate Adyn Gripentrog was sixth in 5:00.26 and Lucas Borman cut a big chunk of time while taking 11th in 5:30.34. Clark added a third-place time of 10:52.42 in the 3,200-meter run, trailing Higgins (10:31.65) and Rhinelander’s Greyson Gremban (10:35.74). Medford’s Naut van Meurs (12:06.42) and Ervin Ulrich (12:11.18) just missed scoring, placing ninth and 10th.

Anakin Stokes, Cory Lindahl, Paxton Rothmeier and Charlie Kleist impressively won the 800-meter relay in 1:36.81, beating Stratford by 3.22 seconds. The 1,600-meter team of Gripentrog, Caleb Scoles, Kleist and Losiewicz made a late push to sneak by Rhinelander and take second in 3:45.66, 4.08 seconds behind Marathon and 0.17 seconds ahead of the Hodags.

Stokes, Evan Paul, Itsael Medina and Kleist sprinted to a time of 47.43 seconds in the 400-meter relay, good for second behind Stanley-Boyd (45.63). Ulrich, Borman, Owen Stockwell and Anthony Seidel placed third in the 3,200-meter relay at 9:43.22, trailing Stratford (8:57.93) and Marathon (9:17.33).

Paul was part of the final cut of high jumpers, placing third among a trio of guys that cleared 5-8. Antigo’s Garrett Kufner was the winner and Rhinelander’s Truman Lamers was credited with second place. Paul was seventh in the long jump at 17-11.5 while Lindahl was 10th at 17-2. Paul’s final two points came with a seventh-place finish in the triple jump at 37-4.75, while Stockwell got the eighth-place point at 36-0.5.

Rothmeier was third in the 110-meter high hurdles at 18.48 seconds, Raider Will Daniels was sixth in 19.49 seconds and Gilman’s Quintin Franzen scored his team’s only two points of the meet by taking seventh in 19.72 seconds. Daniels improved his time in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles at 46.67 seconds, good for fourth, while Raider Hudson Briggs was 11th at 50.82 seconds.

Vincent Seidel had a strong outing in the 800-meter run, placing fourth in 2:14.01, while Gripentrog was sixth in 2:16.16 and Stockwell placed 10th in 2:23.56. Stokes took fifth in the 200-meter dash at 24.45 seconds, while Herrera was 11th in 24.74 seconds.

For Gilman, Braeden Person broke the minute barrier in the 400-meter dash for the first time this spring while taking 11th at 59.49 seconds. Brady McAlpine and Mitchell Moran were 13th and 21st with improved times of 2:25.95 and 2:46.68 in the 800-meter run. McAlpine shaved a little time in the 100-meter dash while taking 17th in 12.83 seconds. Sawyer Winger was 21st in 13.18 seconds, took 13th in the high jump at 5 feet and was 19th in the long jump at 15-2.25. Caleb Marion was 15th in both the discus (88-1) and shot put (31-10).

Northland Pines scored 81 points to place fifth in the team standings, followed by Rhinelander (71.5), Antigo (55), Wittenberg-Birnamwood (32) and Gilman (2).

Gilman is at Bloomer today, Thursday, before hosting its own invitational on Tuesday starting at 4:15 p.m. Medford is at Auburndale Friday in a meet that starts at 4:15 p.m.

Gilman’s Bailey Angell spins into her first discus throw of the evening during Tuesday’s Medford Invitational. Angell easily won the event with her best throw going 110 feet, 3 inches and she handily won the shot put as well.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS

Gilman’s Sawyer Winger has just enough room to spare while clearing 5 feet in Tuesday’s boys high jump competition.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS

Medford’s Alexis Zuleger (l.) takes the baton from Lindsey Klapatauskas in the first exchange of Tuesday’s girls 400-meter relay. Zuleger, Klapatauskas, Aliyah Pilgrim and Jaylin Machon fell just 0.01 seconds behind the winning team from Stratford, finishing in 54.82 seconds.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS