Gaining game experience key for Rib Lake

RIB LAKE SOFTBALL PREVIEW

In a spring sports season of restarts after the lost spring of 2020, no local high school team may be in more of a start-over mode than the Rib Lake softball team.

Inexperience at the varsity level, without question, will be the key obstacle the Lady Redmen will have to overcome as the 2021 season finally gets underway. The good news is that –– barring something unfortunate –– games will be played this spring, which is the biggest thing this 12-member squad needs right now.

“Obviously our biggest weakness is our inexperience at the high school level,” said Dennis Scheithauer, who adds to the team’s newness as a first-year varsity head coach. He replaces Hannah Schmidtfranz, who stepped down after leading Rib Lake to a 3-12 record in 2019. “I really think we’ll improve a lot once we get a few games in. But with this amount of inexperience, there’s no way to get around that other than to get that playing time in games.”

Game number one came Tuesday when Rib Lake lost 12-2 at Stratford in a Marawood Conference crossover game. Crossovers continue this week with a 4:45 p.m. home game against Edgar today, Thursday, and a trip to Auburndale Friday. Rib Lake has the bye next week in the Marawood Conference North schedule and has non-conference trips to Colby-Abbotsford Monday and Butternut-Mercer on the schedule for Monday and Tuesday. The team’s first Marawood North game isn’t until May 11 at 2019 champion Chequamegon.

Scheithauer does bring a little family history to the head coaching position. His son Craig led Rib Lake to a 35-19 record from 2002-04, including the program’s only WIAA state berth in his final year.

He inherits a roster that will be built around a core of five juniors, four of whom did play on the 2019 team that finished 1-7 in the Marawood North and was eliminated in the first round of the WIAA Division 4 tournament by league rival Prentice 23 long months ago. Scheithauer said there has been no doubt during the team’s 15 contact days and its first week of official practices they are happy to be back playing ball.

“Our biggest strength is attitude,” Scheithauer said. “We don’t have a lot of experience, but the attitude has been really good. They work hard in practice and you can tell they are just excited to be back after there was no season at all last year due to COVID. They do whatever we need them to do.”

Of that junior group, Kyla Kennedy got the most time as a freshman and is expected to start this season by anchoring the infield from the shortstop position. Kennedy ranked among team leaders in 2019 with a .279 batting average (12 for 43) with a pair of doubles and a team-high 18 stolen bases.

Molly Heiser takes over the all-important catching position after serving as Samantha Rodman’s back-up two years ago. She went two for seven in limited plate appearances that year but both hits went for doubles and resulted in four runs batted in.

Reagan Reinhardt is expected to see a lot of action at third base on the infield. She saw a fair amount of varsity time as a freshman and collected a pair of hits and stole six bases. Emily Rodman is likely to start out at second base. She saw a little bit of on-field time two years ago.

The fifth junior is Jenna Denzine, a first-year player who is projected to see most of her time in the outfield.

The sophomore class is thin with just two representatives, leftfi elder Raelyn Waszkiewicz and Rhonnie Jo Scheithauer, who coach Scheithauer said can play both infield and outfield positions.

The five-member freshman class obviously lacks experience, but it has some athletic potential. Danielle Mann, Tessa Krause and Josie Scheithauer are penciled in to play on the infield and Cassandra Cano and Leah Chmielowiec will get early looks in the outfield.

Dennis Scheithauer said at this early point there is no surefire number-one pitcher, but there is a lot of depth as Kennedy, Reinhardt, Rodman, Krause, Mann and Josie Scheithauer all could see time in the circle as the Redmen work in the first few weeks to figure out what their optimum lineup looks like.

“If we can throw strikes and not walk people, I think we’ll be OK,” Scheithauer said.

Scheithauer said the 15 contact days were quite helpful in building some momentum heading into the season, especially since the team was even able to get outside for a few of those days in late March and early April. With coaching help from Wayne Mann, Ryan Scheithauer and Craig Scheithauer and some additional girls from the seventh and eighth grades helping add bodies for many of the drills, the team got a lot of good work accomplished. “I appreciate the younger girls coming in and working with our high school girls,” Scheithauer said. “It bodes well for them in the future that they’re able to come in and do those drills with us.” The condensed season will go by fairly quickly with the WIAA post-season starting as early as six weeks from today. The team has 18 games on the schedule, which include its eight Marawood North matchups with Chequamegon, Prentice, Phillips and Prentice and six crossover games against the always- tough teams from the Marawood South. “They’re extremely happy to be back,” Scheithauer said. “Hopefully nothing happens in the next few weeks that upsets the apple cart. They got through the winter pretty good and hopefully things stay that way and we do all we can do to keep playing. “The talent is there. We just need to get the experience of being in games under our belts to make it all come together.”