WIAA DIV. 3 STATE CROSS COUNTRY - ‘FROM NOTHING TO 2ND’
WIAA DIV. 3 STATE CROSS COUNTRY
When all 151 runners had crossed the mile mark Saturday, the Prentice-Rib Lake Hawks held the lead in the team standings of the WIAA Division 3 boys cross country championship race.
Cedar Grove-Belgium, however, took over that lead in the second mile and widened it in the third mile to take home the gold championship trophy from The Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids.
While the top-ranked Hawks were beaten for the first time this fall by another Division 3 team, you couldn’t find a hint of disappointment from them about earning the second-place silver trophy on a nearly perfect late fall day for running that ended a season they felt was also nearly perfect.
“Obviously we came in here wanting to win first place,” sophomore Jeremy Wiitala said. “It doesn’t always go that way. But where we came last year and how we felt at sectionals, that we didn’t even get here. To us, going from that to second place is like last to first almost.”
“We went from nothing to second place at state,” junior Kaleb Scott said. “We sent one person (to state) last year. We’re second place at state this year. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“We all gave it our all,” sophomore Truman Smith said. “I know that.”
Their all beat 14 of the 15 other teams in Saturday’s state field fairly handily, but the Rockets from Cedar Grove-Belgium, a team they knew would be one of the top contenders, had a little too much speed and totaled 98 team points to earn the program’s second state championship and first since 2009.
The Hawks totaled 126 points to outscore third-place Solon Springs-Northwood by 19. Pardeeville was fourth with 157 points and La Crosse Aquinas was fifth with 161. The Hawks’ Marawood Conference rivals Phillips and Stratford were eighth and 10th with 204 and 225 points, respectively.
“We came into this race looking at those top spots and you just don’t know how it’s going to play out,” co-head coach Joshua Isaacson said. “We knew that Cedar Grove team is good. We knew that coming in. We knew it was going to be a battle, but the boys ran great. We thought Phillips would be up there too. They didn’t have the race they wanted to. We figured they’d be up in those top couple of spots also. It’s exciting still to finish second.”
The Hawks were led by brothers Henry and Jack Regier. Henry, a sophomore, took 13th in 16:37.2, missing a top-10 spot on the awards podium by 6.1 seconds. Jack, a senior and the one Hawk who qualified for state last year, was 22nd in 17:00.9, a significant leap forward from his 38th-place finish and time of 17:22.6 from 2023.
Henry Regier stayed fairly consistent in his position through the race, sitting in 17th at the mile mark and 16th after two miles before sneaking up three more spots in the last mile. Jack Regier’s climb toward the top was more dramatic as he sat in 50th at 5:16 through one mile and 35th through two miles before picking up 13 spots in the last third of the race.
“It was nice that I got to know the experience from last year,” he said. “It was different this year because we were here as a team. It was fun.”
Cedar Grove-Belgium got a ninth-place finish from Will Huenink (16:31.1), a 19thplace finish from Wes Huenink (16:51.9) and a 25th-place finish from Jamison Velzke (17:01.8) to set the foundation for their title-winning effort.
Smith hit the finish line next for the Hawks, taking 59th in 17:48.8. But when Rockets Jack Krause and Nolan Brill came in 73rd and 74th as their fourth and fifth scorers, the championship was clinched.
The rest of the Hawks pack came in quickly thereafter. Junior Heston Hueckman had a strong outing as their fourth scorer, taking 76th in 18:10.6, Wiitala was the fifth man, finishing 79th in 18:13.6. Kaleb Scott was right behind Wiitala, taking 81st in 18:16.2 and senior Elijah Scott’s last race ended with a time of 18:20.3 and 85th place.
For the six Hawks competing at state for the first time, “fast” was a word they used to describe the race.
“The entire race felt like it just went by in the blink of an eye,” Smith said. “It’s crazy fast.”
“It was difficult,” Wiitala said. “I mean you look at it on a satellite map, you don’t think about how hilly this course is, but the hills are like vertical, any of the major ones. Walking the course I was like, ‘dang where’s the first mile end, and where’s the second mile end.’ But once we started running and I hit the first mile, and I hit the second mile, that third mile felt like nothing. It flew by. You don’t even think about it.”
“Even on the hard parts, everyone around you just pulls you through it,” Kaleb Scott said. “I didn’t have the best race, but even on the hills, I felt light. There was just someone by me the entire time. I just felt like I was being pulled along in every single spot I was in. It was awesome.”
“It was a crazy experience,” Henry Regier said. “So many people. The start was just so fast.”
The fastest of the fast was La Crosse Aquinas senior Declan Gregg, who won the race in 15:52.7. He was 11th in last year’s state race. Crandon’s Taylor Karcz was the runner-up for the second straight fall. He finished in 15:59. Ladysmith’s Gavin Stewart was third in 16:08.5. He was fifth last year and fourth in 2022.
Columbus Catholic’s Isaac Scheer was fifth in 16:18.1, moving up one spot from last year. Stratford’s Cree Defoe was 11th in 16:34.8 and Marawood Conference champion Gavin Esterholm of Phillips, a team the Hawks got to know quite well this fall, took 24th in 17:01.5 as Jack Regier caught him in the last 50 meters.
Other than Phillips and Stratford, the Hawks were unfamiliar with the other teams in the state field.
“It makes it hard in this race because there’s so many runners you don’t know who the guys are you’re supposed to be with,” Hueckman said. “It was hard to pace. It was more like just run how you feel.”
“Obviously this is a D3 race, we’re all D3,” Wiitala said. “But the thing is a lot of these teams, we didn’t face. That makes it difficult because obviously, with our main competitor Phillips, we know our people where we’re supposed to be. With this, there are so many people. You look at one guy and you think you can keep up with him, and then he’s gone. That’s what it feels like.”
Wiping away any disappointment for the Hawks was the satisfaction of knowing they were a team that set a goal together after their fourth-place sectional finish last October, worked together during the offseason to reach it and it paid off with, by far, the best season of the 18-season existence of the Prentice-Rib Lake co-op.
“When we stood here a year ago, the goal was to bring the team back,” co-coach Bryan Regier said. “It was a big thing to go ahead and rent the hotel rooms and say we’re coming back. We put the credit card down. We’re doing it. And then we realized mid-season, we had a legit chance to mix it up with the top teams. It really changed things for us. But the strength of this program is the students. It’s the runners. As the adults in the program, we just wanted to not fail these guys. We’re so proud of them. They did such a great job. What an incredible team.”
“Last year, we were a good team. We just fell short,” Isaacson said. “We were a good team. We wanted to become a great team. That was the goal this year. Like coach said halfway through the year, it was kinda like, we have something really special here. It’s no longer like we just want to get to state. It’s now we’re going to compete at state.”
“To share this experience with these six other guys, to me it means the world because these are some of the people I love most,” Wiitala said.
“I love this team,” Elijah Scott said. “I said that last week. In all of the interviews I say that. These guys are the best. I’m sad I can’t run with them anymore. But I’ll be back. I’ll run with them. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m sad that I’m done running high school cross country. But our relationships are not done.”
That is certainly true for the five members of the state team who intend to be back next fall and the sizable crew of strong runners who will be right behind them challenging for spots on the 2025 post-season team.
“Winning would’ve really been something, but I wonder now what being runner-up is going to do the program,” Bryan Regier said. “That’s a little different. Now this year when we give out the running plan, it’s like, ‘oh we see what happens when you follow this plan.’ It’s time for the younger guys to step up and do that.”
“We do have such a great group that’s really 11-12 deep,” Isaacson said. “So these guys are looking to next year, our sophomores, they’re right there on that bubble. Unfortunately you can only run seven here. But they’re right there.”
“This is his (Jack Regier’s) last race, (Elijah Scott’s) last race, but with these five guys here, we’ll be back,” Kaleb Scott.
The returning Hawks said the offseason work they put in this past summer will be the blueprint for how to approach next season.
“There were pros and cons to like everything we did,” Kaleb Scott. “We’ll be back faster and stronger next year.”
The only piece of unfinished business now for this year is figure out how the two schools will share the big trophy.
“Yah, we’re working on it,” Kaleb Scott said with a laugh. “We’ll figure it out.”
Coaches Joshua Isaacson and Bryan Regier get a brief moment with the state runner-up trophy before passing it on to the Hawks’s runners during the awards ceremony Saturday. MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS
