Raiders start May with solid outing at Merrill meet

OTTO BACHER INVITE

With the calendar having flipped to May, the Medford Raiders got the season’s most important month started with some solid performances Friday at Merrill’s Otto Bacher Invitational.

The girls finished second in the 11-team meet by scoring 93.5 points. Mosinee won it with 121 points, while host Merrill was third with 87. Three Lakes (66.5) and Lakeland (64.5) topped a competitive middle of the pack to earn the fourth and fifth team spots.

Medford got two wins in the girls meet. Jaylin Machon got the first one in the 100-meter high hurdles. After taking second in the preliminaries in 18.31 seconds, 0.47 seconds behind Wausau East’s Emily Boutain, Machon won the final in a personal-best 17.76, beating Boutain by 0.24 seconds. She also took third in the pole vault, holding steady at a height of 8 feet, 6 inches.

Machon had a role in the second win, anchoring the 400-meter relay team that edged Rhinelander by just 0.04 seconds in an exciting mid-meet race. Marlee Perrin, Sophie Brost, Brenley Beran and Machon finished in 52.66 seconds, easily the best time a Medford team has had in the event this spring.

The 800-meter team of Beran, Stacy Stolp, Alyssa Brandner and Machon came close, finishing second in 1:55.85, 0.7 seconds behind Rhinelander and a tenth of a second ahead of third-place Antigo. Again, that was Medford’s best time of the spring. The 3,200-meter relay team of Ella Daniels, Naomi Fleegel, Ella Dassow and Brooke Rudolph got second as well with its time of 11:24.44, well ahead of Antigo (11:52.12) and behind Tomahawk (10:49.52).

In the final relay of the meet, Medford’s 1,600-meter team of Brandner, Rudolph, Daniels and Meredith Richter was fourth in 4:25.32 behind Mosinee (4:16.77), Merrill (4:19.01) and Lakeland (4:21.32).

Richter took second in the 800-meter run at 2:31.54, smashing her previous personal-best by about 5.4 seconds. She clipped Mosinee’s Britt Fitzgerald by 0.07 seconds for that spot. Merrill’s Elizabeth Schmidt won in 2:23.9. Raider freshman Naomi Fleegel got the eighth-place point at 2:56.95, an improvement of 6.05 seconds from her previous meet. Richter added a third-place time of 1:01.5, another personal best, in the 400-meter dash. Nora Gremban of Northland Pines won in a meet record 59.69 seconds.

Perrin, a freshman, placed three times individually, led by a third-place finish in the 100-meter dash final at a seasonbest 13.21 seconds. She was 0.19 seconds behind winner MacKenzie Wissbroecker of Antigo. Brost was seventh at 13.75 seconds. Perrin was fifth in the 200-meter dash final at 28.24 seconds, while Brost was ninth in 29.09 seconds. Brost was quicker in the preliminaries at 28.86 seconds. Perrin cleared 4-6 to tie for fourth in the high jump.

Rudolph had two strong individual efforts, placing fourth in the 300-meter low hurdles in 55.13 seconds and fifth in the long jump with a personal-best distance of 14-7.5. Beran fell one place shy of scoring, taking ninth at 13-8.25.

Daniels, a sophomore, got four fifthplace points with a personal-best time of 6:11.87 in the 1,600-meter run, while Dassow, a freshman, lowered her time to 13:57.7 in the 3,200-meter run and got the eighth-place point.

Lindsey Klapatauskas got two points with a seventh-place distance of 28-3.25 in the shot put and was 11th in the 100-meter dash preliminaries in a season-best 14.06 seconds. Brost took ninth in the triple jump at 28-11.5. Freshman Riley Clark lowered her time to 1:13.01 while taking 15th in the 400-meter dash.

Antigo (58), Rhinelander (55), Tomahawk (49), Wausau East (48.5), Northland Pines (39) and Crandon (14) rounded out the girls team standings.

Boys take 7th

Led by a big night from senior Joe Sullivan, Medford’s boys scored 53 points and placed seventh ahead of Mosinee (38), Antigo (35), Tomahawk (18) and Crandon (16). Wausau East totaled 108 points to get past Rhinelander (102.5), Lakeland (96) and Merrill (90.5) for the team title. Northland Pines (80) and Three Lakes (61) were fifth and sixth.

Sullivan won the 1,600-meter run in 4:31.11, his best time since last June’s state meet. It was good enough to beat Lakeland’s Owen Clark by 1.89 seconds. Later, Sullivan won the 3,200-meter run in 10:00.69, also his best time since state. Clark again was right behind him at 10:01.91, while Medford’s Silas Wipf was ninth in 11:16.99 in his first-ever 3,200. Sullivan added a personal-best distance of 38-10.5 in the triple jump, which was good for third behind Sam Eppler of Three Lakes (40-8) and Truman Lamers of Rhinelander (39-10).

The 3,200-meter relay team of Zach Rudolph, Vincent Seidel, Josh Clark and Wipf started Medford’s day on the track with a win in 8:52.31. The Raiders edged Antigo by just 0.73 seconds.

Seidel later took seventh in the 800-meter run at an improved 2:15, while younger brother Anthony Seidel was 14th in an improved 2:29.07. Vincent also tied for 11th in the triple jump at 33-2.5. Rudolph later took 10th in the 400-meter dash at 57.0 seconds.

Senior Jake Seifert scored in both throwing events. He was fifth in the discus at 114-1 and seventh in the shot put at 39-6.5. Logan Kawa was a half-inch off his best while taking ninth in the shot put at 37-4.5 and he wasn’t far off his best in the discus at 94 feet. Jude Stark’s 79-foot throw in the discus was his best and was good for 18th place.

The rest of Medford’s scoring came in relays. Gage Losiewicz, Cory Lindahl, Jose Herrera and Anakin Stokes took fifth in the 800-meter relay at 1:39.76. Merrill won in 1:38.03. Itsael Medina, Evan Paul, Herrera and Stokes were sixth in the 400-meter race at 49.48 seconds. Wausau East won in 45.65 seconds. Rudolph, Isaac Kautzer, Cory Lindahl and Vincent Seidel were seventh in the 1,600-meter relay in 3:54.44, well behind the winning team from Lakeland (3:33.13).