STATE CURLING PREVIEW - Pools are set, Raider curlers begin state competition Friday

STATE CURLING PREVIEW

The Medford boys and girls curling teams are heading into the Wisconsin State High School Championships to be held this Friday and Saturday at the Wausau Curling Center.

The tournament features pool play, with the teams with the best records from within their pools advancing into the semifinal and final rounds.

According to head coach Stu Amundson, both Medford girls and boys teams have the opportunity to do well in the tournament with it all coming down to how they do in each of the games.

On the girls side, Medford, who is the fifth seed out of 16 teams, will get a boost after curling three-handed throughout the season with junior Adalyn Dittrich joining the team for the tournament. Tournament rules require teams to start with four players. Dittrich is no stranger to curling having curled with the varsity girls in the past.

She joins skip Caidyn Zenner, third Erica Brandner, and second Stacey Dassow. Brandner is the team’s only senior with Zenner a junior and Dassow a sophomore.

The girls see their first opponents at 10 a.m. on Friday morning facing off against a senior-heavy team from Lodi skipped by Lexie Birchler on sheet 4 of the 8-sheet arena. Of the five girls on the Lodi roster, the back end player spots are held by three seniors with a sophomore and junior on the front end.

The girls will get a break before their second game of the tournament at 4 p.m. on Friday against a Poynette team led by Adrya Riedasch on Sheet 1. All of the members of the Poynette roster are juniors.

At 8 a.m. Saturday, the girls will face Wausau West I led by senior skip Ella Wendling. The Wausau West team has junior Maggie Hintz in third, sophomore Caroline Kurth in second and senior Kenna McFadden at lead.

According to Amundson, the girls have the opportunity to advance out of their pool, but will likely face their biggest challenge on Saturday morning against the perennially tough Wausau West team. Wendling is a nationally recognized curler and recently skipped the Midwest Under-18 Women’s Curling team to a second place finish in the finals of the U18 national championships held in Lafayette, Col. in mid-January.

Stevens Point is the top seed in the girls competition, followed by Portage I, Wausau East and Wausau West I.

On the boys side, the Medford team skipped by freshman Rylan Stockwell with third Jaeden Brandner, second Atticus Winkler and lead Gavin Koplin will also start on sheet 4 playing Lodi, beginning at 12:30 p.m. Brandner is a junior with the other three members of the Medford team being freshmen.

Seeded 13th out of 16 teams, the Raiders have come together well and improved greatly over the course of the season. They have shown the ability to score big ends when needed even as a young squad. Regardless of how the team does in this year’s tournament, they are building a foundation for future success.

The Lodi team is skipped by sophomore Brock Wendt with sophomores in the back end positions and their fifth man on the roster being a freshman.

After Lodi, the boys will play at 6:30 p.m. on Friday on sheet 3 against Stevens Point 1 led by skip senior Derek Brooks who has a pair of juniors in the back end positions and a sophomore and senior in the front end. Stevens Point teams are historically strong.

The boys will go on to face Pardeeville under skip senior Alex Gabsch at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday on sheet 1. The Pardeeville team is also dominated by upperclassmen with a junior playing third, and seniors in the front end positions playing second and lead.

Wausau West I earned the top seed in this year’s field. Portage, Poynette and Lodi round out the top four.

The four girls and boys pool champions will move on to the semifinal rounds to be held at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon with the girls playing on sheets 2 and 3 and the boys teams on sheets 6 and 7. The winners of those games won’t have much time to recover as the finals will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday with the girls final on sheet 4 and the boys final on sheet 5.

Poynette is the defending girls state champion while Wausau West was last year’s boys champion.