Hawks send Orysen to her first state meet
WIAA DIV. 3 CROSS COUNTRY
A 10th-place finish at Timm’s Hill was a good start to Kylie Orysen’s cross country season. The freshman kept getting better from there and will end her first varsity season representing the Prentice-Rib Lake Hawks at the WIAA Division 3 state championship meet. Orysen secured her state spot with a sixth-place finish at Saturday’s WIAA Division 3 Phillips sectional, held at the Moonlight Run course. With three runners ahead of her being part of the state-qualifying teams from Phillips and Chequamegon, Orysen comfortably qualified as the third of five individuals who earned state berths from the meet.
“I’m really excited,” Orysen said Tuesday. “I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s been a goal, but it’s been something that’s been in the back of my head. Going into the meet I felt like I knew I could do it. I just needed to run my hardest and I knew I could do it. My coaches have trained me to this point and now it feels good to finally be there. As a freshman it’s kinda cool.”
The Division 3 girls state race will be held this Saturday at noon at The Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids.
After finishing 12th in a personal-best time of 21:02.4 at the Oct. 13 Marawood Conference meet in Athens, Orysen and her coach from Prentice, Lynn Granberg, were confident she had a great shot to make it. Orysen said her plan Saturday was to get out fast and hang with the leaders, and she was able to follow it.
“I knew that I wasn’t going to be a huge fan of the course,” she said. “I just knew I had to have a positive attitude about it. I knew that if I did that I was going to be capable of (qualifying). I wanted to have a good start. I thought if I had a good start, everyone was probably going to be laying it out and I needed to be competitive with them even if I started out a little quick in my first mile.”
She said her pace was a little quicker than normal in that first mile. Like most of the field, her time wound up being a little slower than normal. But at 22:06.3, it was plenty good enough. The fourth individual qualifier was Cumberland’s Carly McCreary at 22:10.3 and the fifth was Webster’s Ashley Wolf at 22:12.4. Orysen said once the top runners separated themselves from the rest of the pack, there wasn’t much place shuffling on the course.
“I was more worried about place because obviously the time doesn’t matter if you are in the right place to go,” Orysen said. “I feel like on average everyone probably ran about a minute slower than PRs or where they normally run.”
Granberg said Tuesday that, for a freshman, Orysen has a true grasp of what it takes to run with the best.
“As a runner she pretty much takes this on her own. You can totally tell that has helped her,” Granberg said. “She’s a worker. You can tell her to go run and work at this certain speed and she’ll do it. She’s a very, very coachable kid.
“She pretty much had a goal with every meet she ran,” Granberg said. “Either she told me about it or she kept it to herself. Either way, I knew she had a goal and I could tell at the end if she met her goal or if she didn’t. She’s just a hard worker. I can’t say enough about that.”
“I would say varsity is definitely different in that in middle school I was probably always in the top five, especially in my eighth grade year,” Orysen said. ‘Now at the varsity level almost everyone is a pretty good runner. Running an extra mile, the speed is basically the same. You’re just running longer. It’s kind of hard to get used to, but I think I’ve gotten better.”
Chequamegon’s Autumn Michalski was the girls champion Saturday with a time of 19:09.3. The Marawood champ blew away the rest of the sectional field as well. Ladysmith’s Marika Gago was well behind Michalski at 21:14.2. Michalski’s teammate Claudia Lasiowski was third at 21:23.1 and Bruce’s Zoey Kemmitz was the second individual qualifier while taking fourth at 21:34.7. Meredith Merlak of Phillips was fifth at 21:38.2.
Phillips scored 65 points to win the sectional championship, while Chequamegon scored 79 as those two Marawood teams earned the state team berths from the sectional. Ladysmith was third (96), with Webster (100) and Washburn (100) rounding out the top five.
Orysen has a chance to follow in the footsteps of 2021 Prentice graduate Serena Moore, who was a four-time state qualifier for the Hawks. Orysen said she watched Moore run at state as well as the 2019 Hawks team that qualified, which gives her an idea of what the atmosphere will be like on Saturday.
“I’m so excited,” she said. “Sectionals was such an adrenaline rush. I can’t wait for state.”
“My goal for her is to have a PR and I think she can do it at Ridges,” Granberg said. “It’s fairly flat. It’s not as flat as Athens, but I think like she said the adrenaline is going to take her. I think she’s going to be quite surprised with her time. There are so many people there cheering. It’s quite the experience for sure.”
“My goal for Saturday is just to go and have fun and just run my race and just enjoy it,” Orysen said. “It’s state. I want to enjoy feeling the adrenaline and the experience of it.”
More from Phillips
Two more Hawks ran in Saturday’s girls race in Phillips. Amy Espinoza was 65th out of 81 runners in a time of 29:27. Olivia Lopez was 70th in exactly 30 minutes.
“For the girls we were hoping to have a full team,” Granberg said. “We had some injuries plaguing the girls so we couldn’t fill that team all year. We’re looking forward to next year though. I only lose one senior girl (Emma Scott). She came out for the first time this year. Next year, we’re looking for bigger and better things from Kylie of course and then there are a couple that are coming along that I’m hoping will help and get us to a team of five.”
Prentice-Rib Lake finished eighth in the boys team standings with 179 points. They were led by Kaleb Scott and Ryan Buehler, who finished 29th and 30th in a field of 98 runners with times of 19:32 and 19:34.2. The Hawks’ scoring pack also included Evan Lord, who placed 39th in 20:16.4; Jack Regier, who was 41st in 20:23.2 and Elijah Scott, who took 43rd in 20:30.4.
“I think their adrenaline got the best of them because second place was kind of up in the air,” Granberg said. “There wasn’t really a set team that it was going to be. We knew Phillips was going to win. I think they had it in their mind that maybe we can do this. They had some positive thoughts and were ready to go. I think they had some adrenaline that carried them through the first mile and then they kind of petered out.
“I’m proud of all those kids,” Granberg added. “Their split between the first runner and fifth runner was only 58 seconds. Then you look at the other kids from other teams and it was like two or three minutes. We can run as a pack. We do really well with that. We just have to move our times up a little bit.”
Sophomore Matthew Schmidt added a 66th-place time of 21:59.2 and senior Nolan Sarkkinen finished with a 78th-place time of 22:43.9.
Phillips edged Solon Springs-Northwood 69-73 to win the championship, though both teams advance to state. Grantsburg was third with 78 points, while Chequamegon (112), Shell Lake (121), Ladysmith (122) and Frederic-Luck (164) finished ahead of the Hawks.
Gavin Stewart of Ladysmith won the individual championship with a time of 16:55.9. Dylan Taggert (17:17.6) and Isaac Dickenson of Solon Springs-Northwood solidified their team’s second-place finish by taking second and fourth. Grantsburg’s Connor Quimby was third in 17:37.6 and his teammate Aden Erickson qualified by taking fifth in 17:46.2. Shell Lake’s Logan Christel (17:58.3) and Dalton Anderson (18:06.6) were sixth and seventh and earned the last individual qualifying spots.
“We lose Ryan Buehler,” Granberg said. “He’s been running for a couple of years. A great athlete, great kid. Ben Petersen is another awesome kid. They were our captains from Rib Lake. Nolan Sarkkinen, he ran his freshman year and then he came out this year. He was pretty proud of himself. I know I was. He had a pretty good year. Very, very important part of the team. Seventh runner. Came on strong. Had a lot of PRs. I think he was impressed with himself that he was able to do that. They all improved with their times. Girls and boys both. From Timm’s Hill to the end of the year, wow, it was pretty impressive.”
Prentice-Rib Lake cross country coaches Josh Isaacson, Lynn Granberg and Noah Behling celebrate with Kylie Orysen after the freshman qualified for the state meet at Saturday’s sectional at Phillips.SUBMITTED PHOTO
