RETURN TO RAPIDS

Girls win third sectional title; Sullivan, Hraby advance too

The Medford Raiders went into Saturday’s WIAA Division 2 sectional girls cross country race as the favorites and competed like it, adding to their 2021 string of no-doubt victories and earning their third straight sectional championship on the Colby High School course.

The Raiders, who were denied last year’s sectional title with a late switch to Division 1, embraced the role of being the team with the target on its back by putting all five scorers among the top 17 finishers in the 86-runner field and all seven runners among the top 27 as they remained unbeaten for the year in Wisconsin races.

“The Raiders proved today that if you want to be successful you have to keep working hard and the minutes and seconds will take care of themselves,” Medford head coach Kevin Wellman said Saturday. “The team showed why they are great after each race congratulating each other on all aspects of the race from a great time to a great kick, it was great to witness their team camaraderie.”

The boys went in as a long shot to earn a state berth as a team, but they finished on a high note as well. As expected, senior Joe Sullivan qualified for his third straight state meet by placing second out of 103 entrants. Sophomore Tanner Hraby capitalized on his chance to qualify for his first state meet with a fifth-place finish and several team members closed with their best times of the season as the Raiders took sixth out of 15 teams.

Sullivan and Hraby will compete in the first race of the day this Saturday at the WIAA state championships, which return to The Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids after a one-year absence. The Division 2 boys kick things off at noon. The Division 2 girls race is set for 1:45 p.m.

Girls dominate again

Medford (sixth) and West Salem (11th) were the only state-ranked teams by the Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Association heading into Saturday’s meet and they were the two girls teams to qualify for state. The Raiders, though, won the championship plaque by a comfortable 47-75 scoring margin.

Afterwards, the girls said the cool, calm weather was perfect for running, the team felt relaxed going in, especially after getting their lead runner back in the lineup, and they just did what they’ve done all season long in running for each other.

“I think we run for each other more, encourage each other, be proud of each other,” Bryn Fronk said.

“It’s really exciting to watch your teammates PR and watch your teammates cross that finish line,” Ella Daniels said.

“It’s cool when you go around a corner and you can see everybody else is like, ‘oh it’s Medford, Medford, Medford,’” Richter said.

“It’s the best when you’re running and you can hear, ‘go Bryn, go Brooke, go Alexis, go Jennifer,’” Fronk said. “I love hearing that.”

Richter, who missed the Great Northern Conference meet a week earlier due to contact tracing, returned with a vengeance, getting under the 20-minute mark for the first time this fall at 19:58.6. No one was going to catch Merrill standout Elizabeth Schmidt, who won in 19:33.7, but no one else was going to catch Richter either. West Salem freshman Mia Olson took third, 11 seconds behind Richter.

“It was just good to be back,” Richter said. “I definitely wanted to stay up there and keep my spot, which I did. It was good. I just wanted to run fast. That’s all. It’s been too long.”

Senior Jennifer Kahn has always found the Colby course to her liking, and she crushed it again on Saturday, placing eighth in a season-best 20:33.3 that beat her Sept. 11 time on this course by 1:24. Brooke Rudolph’s stellar junior season continued with a 10th-place time of 20:40.8, also a season-best. She was nearly two minutes faster on the course than she was earlier in the year.

“I do like this course,” Kahn said. “I think it went pretty well. I tried to keep close with Meredith for as long as I could.”

“It was good. I was just trying to keep going, trying to PR,” said Rudolph, who noted the whole team was motivated by missing out on state last year.

Senior Alexis Fleegel used a strong finishing kick to place 14th in a seasonbest 20:58.1. Fleegel picked off a key runner, West Salem’s Morgan Quackenbush in the latter stages and then got a couple more runners as she approached the finish line. Fronk capped the scoring by picking off Tomahawk’s Alli Palmer and Quackenbush in the home stretch and taking 17th in 21:11.2.

“It went pretty good,” Fleegel said. “I got that West Salem girl in the woods and I got one more girl at the end. I felt like I was going really fast.”

“It was great,” Fronk said. “I had a real good kick. The weather was good. It was a good race.”

Adding to the lists of best times, Daniels placed 25th in 21:39.1 and freshman Ella Dassow was 27th at 21:41.9 in her first sectional race.

“I wanted to beat the runners in front of me,” Daniels said. “I had a really bad race here last time (23:25.1), so I really wanted to do well. I ended up beating my time by quite a bit.”

“It was pretty exciting; it’s fun to be able to compete like this,” Dassow said. “Middle school is a little bit more chill. This is fun. I always try to stay with Ella and key my pace with her.”

While the team may have been relaxed, the coaches said they felt some anxiousness in the week before the race.

“The race official checked in the girls and he goes, ‘good luck at state next week,’ and I thought, ‘what are you doing?’” Wellman said with a laugh. “Like I’ve been telling the girls all year, they don’t hand you the trophy when you get off the bus. You have to run the race. The fact that we were back to our normal team running was good.”

“I think after conference last week with the quarantining, it was nerve wracking all week,” assistant coach Sherry Meyer said.

“They had a good week of practice and I know they’re looking forward to next week,” Wellman said. “We’ll keep it light. Keep it fun.”

The Raiders said their only goals for state are to keep improving times and let the team placement fall where it falls.

“We work good as a team. We’ll make it count,” Richter said.

As for Saturday being the last time this group will run together, Fleegel simply said, “We’re trying not to think of that.”

One of the headlines going into the boys race was the head-to-head battle for the individual championship between favorites Sullivan and Eli Boppart of Mauston. The two split first-place finishes during the season with Sullivan beating Boppart by 23.9 seconds on the Colby course on Sept. 11 and Boppart winning by 17.2 seconds at Wisconsin Dells Oct. 9.

Boppart got out fast on Saturday and won convincingly in 16:10.6. Sullivan easily secured his state berth in 16:47.6, beating third-place finisher Owen Clark of Lakeland by 4.9 seconds. West Salem’s Brennan Garbers was fourth in 16:57.4. Then it was Hraby, who finished in a personal- best 17:04.9.

“It feels pretty good,” Hraby said. “I PR’d by like 40 seconds. I kinda knew where I was with other people and where I had to be. I saw the Lakeland freshman (Ashton Bremer) actually and I just kind of stuck with him for a while so then I knew what place I was in and that helped a lot. It was open enough to see everybody so I knew where I was.”

“I knew he could do it,” Sullivan said “I just knew he had to run a good race. We were talking a little strategy before the race. We just said you have to get up there and then stay with them. I knew if he could find a guy up there and just draft behind him, especially on this open course, he could do it. I was really happy when I turned around and all of a sudden I saw Tanner. I just said, ‘let’s go!”

“Tanner ran an electric race,” Wellman said. “Tanner knew he had a chance to qualify for state but was going to have to run a great race and really push himself.”

The key stretch for Hraby came within the first mile when he made his move to get out of a big pack and into front-running position.

“I would say it was about 400 meters in,” Hraby said. “I kinda got boxed in and then I took it to the outside and just went around everybody. It’s pretty cool. My goal was just to get (to state). Now I don’t really know what to expect.”

Sullivan was disappointed he didn’t give Boppart a better race.

“(My race) was all right. It wasn’t anything great,” he said. “I’m just happy to get through this. It’s nice to know (I have another race). But I should still probably be a little bit better. I’ll try to put this one in the past and go at it next week.”

Wellman and Meyer said after the race they could already sense Sullivan will rebound at state.

“He’ll process it and he’ll be fine,” Wellman said. “He’s going to have his race ideas in his head and he’ll go do it.

“He’ll bounce back,” Meyer said. “That’s racing.”

“You’ve gotta have a short-term memory,” Wellman added. “He’ll be ready. He’s probably already ready right now.”

“It’s a nice course,” Sullivan said of The Ridges. “Golf courses have those rolling hills but it’s really nothing too bad. I really like the course. I’m excited to get back down there.”

Sullivan, who finished 31st at state in Division 2 and 33rd in Division 1 last year at Hartland Arrowhead, said his advice to Hraby will be simply to not worry about other runners.

“Don’t get pulled out right away, that’s probably the biggest thing,” Sullivan said. “There’s going to be a lot of people going out. Run your race. Now you know you can stick up with a lot of those guys. Just find your pace, find some people to run behind, draft them and kick it at the end.”

Sophomore Logan Gubser finished 36th for Medford Saturday in a time of 18:33.6 that was a season-best by 12 seconds. Junior Josh Clark was 59th in 19:39.4 and sophomore Nick Steliga was 68th in a season-best 19:56.1 Senior Stephen Hraby wasn’t far from his seasonbest at 20:03.5, good for 74th. Junior Lucas Borman set a PR at 21:54.7, good for 93rd.

“Lucas has been running great,” Wellman said. “He has been sneaky fast all year, just slowing chipping away. When your seventh runner is running a sub-22 that’s a pretty good day.”

Wellman also noted the team, both boys and girls, were unified the previous day by attending the visitation for 20-year-old Kyle Petrick, a former teammate of many Raiders who died in a car accident in Monroe County on Oct. 18.

“I know some kids were thinking about that pretty hard,” he said. “A lot of our juniors and seniors ran with him.”

Medford’s Ella Daniels holds a strong pace early in Saturday’s WIAA Division 2 girls sectional race in Colby, which the Raiders won to advance to state for the third time in four seasons.

Medford’s Joe Sullivan isn’t far behind Mauston’s Eli Boppart early in Saturday’s WIAA Division 2 boys sectional race. Sullivan’s second-place finish sends him to state for the third straight year.

Meredith Richter

The Medford Raiders claimed their third WIAA Division 2 sectional championship plaque in four years with another dominant effort at Colby Saturday morning. Team members include (front) Ella Dassow, (l. to r.) Lydia Way, Bryn Fronk, Ella Daniels, Jennifer Kahn, Alexis Fleegel, Brooke Rudolph, Natasha Butt and Meredith Richter.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS