Great individual successes, team progress stood out in 2023-24
With the catch of a Nick Steliga pop-up by La Crosse Logan first baseman Tyler Rumsey just after 6 p.m. on Tuesday, June 4, Taylor County’s 2023-24 high school sports year ended with the Medford Raiders falling one win shy of a trip to the WIAA state baseball tournament. Rib Lake’s push toward state also ended a few minutes before that in its sectional final game.
As always, the 2023-24 school year ran the full gamut with thrilling team wins, opportunities lost, tremendous individual achievements including two state championships, coulda-woulda-shouldas, out of the blue surprises and, hopefully, a lot of great memories and life lessons learned for all involved.
Keeping up with the action is quite the 10-month blur. At the varsity level in 202324, there were 156 basketball games involving county teams, 70 baseball games, 69 softball games, 106 volleyball matches, 37 track meets, 41 hockey games, 22 wrestling duals and 20 other meets, 35 soccer games … you get the idea.
Trust me, the blurs get blurrier each year.
As we plow through one last postseason award period, some of the names you’ll see provide evidence for what I would say is one of the main storylines for 2023-24. And that is, this area continues to produce some pretty impressive studentathletes.
Meredith Richter, Tanner Hraby, Jackson Blomberg, Kyla Krause, Troy Duellman, Bailey Angell are names I know I feel like I’ve typed a million times and those who read these pages probably feel like they’ve seen a million times. But there are reasons for that. They’re natural talents who also worked hard to maximize their talents. And they’re all great interviews too that have been so fun to get to know the last four years.
Our college sports updates become two-part series each season because we’re sending so many more on to the next level than we did 25 years ago. Now we’ll add Richter for cross country/track at Nebraska-Omaha, Hraby for baseball at UW-River Falls, Blomberg for baseball at UW-Stevens Point, Angell for throwing with Minnesota-Duluth track and Krause for acrobatics and tumbling at the University of Montevallo. Max Dietzman, Logan Kawa and Owen Stockwell of Medford also are planning to pursue college athletics with Dietzman joining UWRiver Falls football, Stockwell joining the Falcons for track and field and Kawa joining UW-Whitewater wrestling next year. Hopefully I didn’t miss any others.
Plus, there are familiar names we’re not even done with yet, like Medford’s state wrestling champion Gage Losiewicz who has one more year to go as a Raider and is another kid who just doesn’t stop working. There are names that we’re just getting started with like Medford sophomores Rylee Hraby and Zayleah Leonhardt or freshman Kayla Baumgartner or Gilman freshman Taydyn Angell, just to throw out a few.
Another storyline for the year is that it felt like more teams improved or exceeded expectations than went backwards. Peaks and valleys are inevitable in high school sports. While it’d be inaccurate to say the transfer portal doesn’t exist at this level, it’s also not really an option to fortify a roster here. Coaches and programs have to work with the hands they’re dealt.
It was neat to see Gilman’s girls finally break through with their first regional titles in volleyball and girls basketball since 2000 and 1998 respectively. We celebrated three team conference championships this year –– Gilman football, Medford wrestling and Rib Lake boys basketball –– and had several other teams in contention. One of those was Medford boys basketball, which started the year 1-7 and ended up playing for a share of the GNC title on the last night of the regular season.
Probably because it’s so fresh on the mind yet, the Medford baseball team stands out as a certain nominee for local team of the year. To go 25-4, win 18 straight games and reach the sectional final, considering the amount of talent that program has graduated the last two years, was remarkable. It’s hard to say how state seeding would have gone, but it’s quite possible Medford would’ve seen Mosinee at state. It would’ve been interesting to see how a third matchup would’ve gone and what kind of game the Raiders could’ve given the Indians after improving so much after 11-3 and 11-1 defeats back on April 8 and 11.
Rib Lake’s girls teams of volleyball, basketball and softball didn’t make major breakthroughs from a win-loss standpoint, but they’re programs, of course with many of the same kids that were sophomores and juniors, that don’t seem to be far off from some exciting stuff. Medford’s softball team was just 13-11, but was still so young and seems to be close to big things.
Some teams just had nowhere to go but up in 2023-24, and in those cases they did.
So what’s ahead in 2024-25? Who knows? That’s why we watch.
Some items of interest for the soonto- be-here fall season are the start of Rib Lake’s eight-player football program, the additions of Wausau East and Tomahawk into GNC football and the first year of five divisions for the WIAA volleyball tournament where, oddly, Rib Lake (D-4) and Gilman (D-5) will be in different divisions, which I never thought I’d see. We’ll get our first look at the weirdness of some postseason assignments as the WIAA’s success factor goes into its first year. We’ll also see at least two new coaching faces right off the bat with Jake Rhyner taking over Medford cross country and Sam Klinner becoming the new girls swim coach.
And, while so many of those aforementioned names will no longer be around, I know all three county high schools have incoming freshman groups that people expect are going to make some noise sooner rather than later in some sports. That wheel never stops. Thank you to the graduates, then it’s in with the new.
Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.
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