Balciar, Damm lead squad that is a little deeper than last year

Just in time for competition, Mother Nature relented and tennis courts throughout the area have reappeared in the last week after months of being buried under snow and ice.

The Medford Raiders are one of several northern Wisconsin boys teams who won’t have much outdoor practice time to work off of when competition starts, which in Medford’s case, is today, Thursday at Antigo.

Second-year head coach Kyle Ranum and new assistant Cullen Peterson have a roster of 15 players to work with and evaluate this spring. Seven return after filling varsity spots on last year’s thin, but successful 10-member squad. Some of the new additions could give Medford an immediate boost at the varsity level.

The coaches will know more a week from now after the Raiders get through tonight’s Great Northern Conference opener, a Saturday quad at Amery and league matchups Monday and Tuesday at home against Stevens Point Pacelli and Rhinelander.

One thing Ranum is sure of is he has a couple of aces at the top of the lineup.

Senior Saskatoon Damm and junior Brayden Balciar will start the season filling the top two singles spots, though who will be the one and who will be the two was still undecided as of Tuesday, which also happened to be the first day of outdoor practice for the Raiders. Both were swinging hard as they hit with each other on the court Tuesday afternoon.

“This is a sectional runner-up and a sectional third-place finisher last year,” Ranum said. “These guys are state level kids this year. I expect both of them to have a shot at state.”

Balciar was the GNC’s number-two singles champion, while Damm finished second in the GNC in flight three. Balciar, a flight-four WIAA Division 2 sectional champion as a freshman, finished third in flight two last spring and was 16-3 overall. His bid for state was stopped in the sectional semifinal match against eventual champion Joe O’Flaherty of La Crosse Aquinas.

Damm wasn’t eligible to qualify for state while playing in the third flight, but he finished a 12-4 season by winning his sectional semifinal match over Erik Moore of La Crosse Logan 7-5, 6-0 before he had to drop out of his final with a medical forfeit to Shane Willenbring of Aquinas.

From there, junior newcomer Jude Stark, who’s made his name in wrestling at Medford and moves to tennis this spring from track is a likely candidate to fill the number-three singles spot and the fourth slot to start the season was undecided early in the week.

The top four doubles candidates were known to start the week. The combinations were not.

Seniors Dante Axon and Brett Lundy and junior Conner Klingbeil are back. Axon, a letter winner the past two springs, found his role last year in flight one with the now graduated Brayden Machon. They went 6-5 together and earned honorable mention in the GNC. Lundy and Klingbeil wound up filling the flight-two spot, went 9-4 together and finished second in the conference. The newcomer to the mix is Cale Schulz, a sophomore who Ranum said has played his way into a varsity spot in his first year.

“Dante will be one doubles for sure then it will be a combination of him with either Brett or Conner,” Ranum said. “The other will play two doubles with Kale.”

Sophomore Mason Reimann and junior Nathan Willman return after seeing some success last year.

Reimann did so at numberfour singles while Willman got lots of time at numberthree doubles.

Freshman Keagan Gehrke is another player Ranum sees as having the potential to crack the lineup in his first season. Parker Hill, Oliver Swiantek, Cole Zenner, Jaeden Brandner and Gavyn Dellich are the others looking to see what they can do in the sport.

The Raiders went 5-8 in dual meets last year and had a tennis rarity by actually tying twice 3-3 with Ashland and Antigo. The five wins came consecutively midway through the season. The Raiders were 4-3-1 in the GNC, sweeping Lakeland and Stevens Point Pacelli. The Raiders finished third in the final conference standings.

“It’s us and Antigo for second every year it seems,” Ranum said. “Lakeland will be OK. They return quite a bit, but I think we’re better. I think we’re better than Pacelli. I see it being us and Antigo for second. Rhinelander is on another level with 40 guys and they can rotate in and out.”

The quad this weekend is something Ranum is looking forward to. Medford will face host Amery, Ashland and Osceola in dual meets starting at 10 a.m.

“That will be a good day because we’ll see some of these guys improve from their first matches to their third,” Ranum said. “Plus we’ll be going against teams similar to us. Teams that we’ll see in the subsectional and sectional.”

Lakeland is the site of this year’s conference meet, set for Thursday, May 18, and the T-Birds will also host the subsectional on May 22. Eau Claire Regis is again the sectional host.