MEDFORD GIRLS TENNIS PREVIEW - Raiders hope to hang with tough GNC competition

MEDFORD GIRLS TENNIS PREVIEW

Mother Nature dampened what has been an otherwise positive start to the girls tennis season for the Medford Raiders, who feature a seniorheavy group at the varsity level.

Tenth-year head coach Jake Bucki starts the season with 13 players that have been working in his top group, vying for the 10 positions available. While his singles lineup is fairly set to start things out, he and the Raiders were hoping to do a lot of mixing, matching and experimenting Saturday at the Baldwin-Woodville Quad.

The problem was persistent heavy mist that prevented the competition with the host Blackhawks, Amery and Barron from ever getting started.

“We still had fun though, had some team bonding,” senior Indya Mann said.

Now Medford will start its season with a couple of tough back-to-back tests traveling to defending Great Northern Conference champion Lakeland today, Thursday, and then hosting Stevens Point Pacelli at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The Cardinals are a team Bucki views as a GNC title contender behind a formidable singles lineup.

“(Baldwin-Woodville) is the first invite that we have every year and it’s so nice to be able to mix and match, change girls from singles to doubles just to get a sense of who should be where and with who,” Bucki said during practice Tuesday at the MASH courts. “That’s the big thing right now, to just find partnerships that work. In practice it’s much more difficult to do that. It just is. It’s a little different mindset for them as opposed to facing another team.”

Or as senior Audrey Ruesch put it, “You don’t want to crush your teammates.”

As it’s been the past couple of years, tennis remains a high-participation sport at Medford with just over 40 girls participating through the first week. Luckily for players looking to work their way to the varsity, they were able to get some first-week competition with the top JV group playing at Wisconsin Rapids Saturday and all of the JV girls getting some match play Monday at Wausau West.

Julie Tlusty is the varsity assistant coach, while Karlee Batchelder is back with the JVs along with Cullen Peterson, who’s been a boys assistant the past two years.

“It’s a great problem,” Bucki said. “For summer practices it’s good being able to split like this. Each of us have about 13-16 girls each. I’ve been able to stay with the JV a fair amount and that actually has been nice. It’s so nice to work with them when they’re fresh in the program. Depth is not an issue.”

One of the focuses for the girls in practice thus far has been movement.

“We’ve been working a lot on volleys and up at the net work,” senior Lily Holmes said.

“We’re working on not standing flat on your feet, staying low to ground, positioning,” Ruesch said.

Ruesch is the leader of the varsity group. A two-time letter winner, Ruesch will fill the number-one singles spot after ending last year at number-one doubles with the departed Masaeda Krug. She was 3-5 at flight-two singles before switching. Krug and Ruesch went 11-7 in flight-one doubles and advanced to the WIAA Division 1 sectional.

“I switched from singles to doubles and now I’m singles again,” Ruesch said. “Singles is definitely more on yourself. You can’t blame the other person or anything like that. But doubles definitely taught me to go up to the net. I know (Bucki) said it’s probably the best thing I could’ve done last year was do doubles.

I’m excited. I want to win every match, but obviously that won’t happen, but I can try.”

Senior Grace Holmes is likely to start the year at flight-two singles after spending most of last season at number-two doubles with Mann. They were 13-13 together overall in flights one and two. Junior Makenna Tlusty and senior Natalie Preuss will start in the three and four slots.

Preuss is the defending GNC champion at numberfour singles, where she went undefeated in league play and finished 18-4 overall after reaching the sectional. Tlusty and the graduated Madison Clarkson were second-place finishers in the GNC at number-three doubles last fall, going 9-4 overall together.

“Audrey will be solid at one,” Bucki said. “Not overpowering but she’s going to be able to play with anyone. Grace will be able to play with a lot of girls at two. Then at three and four, I feel we should do real well. Makenna and Natalie have very similar styles. They both retrieve a lot of balls. I want to see where we’re at with that singles lineup and I want to try sticking to it and see where our team can go with it.”

Doubles is where the tougher decisions need to be made. Mann figures to fill one of the spots in flight one. From there, Bucki and coach Tlusty are working with a crew that includes Lily Holmes, who played in six number- three doubles matches last year and seniors Rachel Daniels, Hannah Dahl and Sydnie Peterson, who all got tastes of varsity action as well. Senior Emily Kiselicka is making a push for time and juniors Bayley Metz, Tallula Hahn and Chloe Kapitz are in the mix too.

“Everybody is putting in the effort,” Lily Holmes said.

“We are throwing different pairings together every single day and just trying to get them to focus on just playing,” Bucki said. “Do what you can with your partner and the rest will take care of itself. There is a thing too about being with the right partner. It’s a thing, even in boys. That’s not the reason you put them together, but when they’re really close in skill level, that makes a big difference.”

For the second straight fall, Medford is stuck as one of the smallest programs in Division 1 in the WIAA tournament, which will make state qualification quite difficult. But some high placements in the Great Northern Conference are in play, both teamwise and individually.

Medford does have some ground to make up if it’s going to climb from its fifth-place finish of a year ago. In a conference where team points add up with each individual win, every match matters. The conference was generally young overall in 2023, meaning the vast majority of its top players then are back now, including the reigning Singles Player of the Year Natalie Cooper of Pacelli and half of the top 2023 doubles team, Lakeland’s Kristina Ouimette. Lakeland (104), Newman Catholic (85), Rhinelander (82), Pacelli (74) and Medford (67) were the top five teams.

“It’s going to be tough this year,” Bucki said. “This is the toughest the conference has ever been by far. I told the girls our goal should be conference champions. You’ll never do it if you don’t believe. Look at last year. We beat Lakeland the first time we played them. We beat 4-3 in the Wausau West Invite and that was our lineup and their lineup. We ended up losing 5-2 to them at home the next week with two close matches that we lost. That showed right there that we were with the champions last year.”