Women’s swim

in the 60-meter final at 8.21 seconds. She was 16th out of 34 entrants in the 200 that day in 28.1 seconds.

Freshman Olivia Lopez, a 2024 Rib Lake graduate, long jumped for UWStevens Point’s women’s track and field team during the indoor season. She finished the season with a 19thplace jump of 167.25 at the WIAC Indoor Championships the Pointers hosted.

Her best jump of the winter was 16-8.5, recorded at UW-Whitewater’s Leonard “Squig” Converse Invitational. That was good for 20th place. She was eighth with a jump of 16-1.75 in her first meet on Jan. 25, a triangular at UW-Platteville that included UW-Eau Claire. She placed eighth out of 14 long jumpers.

At the UWOshkosh Titan Challenge, Lopez jumped 15-7.5 to place 16th out of 24 entrants.

Freshman Bailey Angell, a 2024 Gilman graduate, is in her first year as a thrower for the Minnesota-Duluth women’s team, but she was unable to compete due to injury in her first indoor season with the program.

Medford 2021 graduates Erin Bergman and Morgan Ball finished their senior women’s swim seasons at St. Cloud State and the University of Minnesota-Morris.

Bergman returned to competition after missing last season. She was recently one of 13 St. Cloud State student-athletes to earn a Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) Myles Brand All-Academic with Distinction Award. The honor is named after the late NCAA president Myles Brand and is bestowed to senior NSIC student-athletes who have a cumulative grade point average of 3.75 or higher, are exhausting their eligibility and are on track to graduate. Recipients are recognized with a certificate of achievement and a wristwatch.

Bergman’s career concluded with entries in three events in the NSIC Women’s Swim and Dive Championships held Feb. 12-15 in West Fargo, N.D. She swam the 50-yard freestyle in 26.88 seconds, the 100-yard backstroke in 1:02.49 and the 200-yard backstroke in 2:16.67, a time that placed 37th in the preliminaries.

St. Cloud State placed third in this year’s conference meet with 688.5 points and trailed Augustana (944) and Minnesota State University (879).

In a 206-82 dual meet win over the College of St. Benedict on Jan. 28, Bergman was fifth in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:08.02 was part of St. Cloud State’s fifth-place 200-yard medley relay team, which finished in 1:56.19. St. Cloud’s teams took the top three spots in the race, led by a group that finished in 1:50.89.

The Huskies started the year by hosting two dual meets with Northern Michigan Oct. 4-5. On day one, a 148-90 loss, Bergman was sixth in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:05.34, was on the fifthplace 200-yard freestyle relay team that finished in 1:47.41 and was on the seventhplace 200-yard medley relay that finished in 1:56.63.

On day two, a 153-69 loss, Bergman placed 10th in the 200yard backstroke at 2:25.87 and was on the seventh-place 400-yard medley team that had a time of 4:26.64.

In a four-team meet at UW-La Crosse on Oct. 12, Bergman placed 25th in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:06.76 and 19th in the 200-yard backstroke at 2:23.53. The 200-yard medley relay team she was part of finished 16th in 1:59.42. The Huskies finished second in the meet with 705.5 points, trailing Minnesota State Mankato (817.5) and beating UW-L (503) and Truman State (405).

In a home meet against St. Thomas on Nov. 9, Bergman placed seventh with her season-best time by far in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:01.57. She added a 14thplace time of 2:19.82 in the 200-yard backstroke, also her best mark of the season.

Ball finished her season at Minnesota-Morris with by appearing in six events in the 2025 Liberal Arts Championships hosted in Racine by the Milwaukee School of Engineering. The Cougars place third out of five women’s teams with 374. They finished ahead of the Illinois Institute of Technology (280) and MSOE (163) while trailing St. Ambrose (606) and Asbury University (410).

Individually, Ball was 15th in the 100yard backstroke at 1:21.49, 23rd in the 100-yard freestyle at 1:10.64 and 24th in the 50-yard freestyle at 30.27 seconds. Those times were all recorded in preliminary heats.

Ball was part of an eighth-place team in the 200-yard freestyle relay that finished in 1:55.82, part of the 10th-place team in the 400-yard medley relay that finished in 5:05.6 and part of the 10th-place team in the 400-yard freestyle relay that finished in 4:15.4.

Ball was busy on the weekend of Jan. 17-18 when the Cougars won a pair of dual meets.

First, Minnesota-Morris defeated Hamline 152-57. Ball was fourth in the 200-yard backstroke at 2:56.94 and part of the second-place 200-yard freestyle relay team that had a time of 1:56.39. Morris’ top team won in 1:47.35. Then, Morris rolled past Morningside 141-41. Ball was sixth in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:21.04, seventh in the 50-yard freestyle at 30.92 seconds and part of the fourthplace 200-yard freestyle relay team (2:04.23).

Ball got her first action of the season in an 83-18 win over Iowa Lakes Community College on Nov. 16. She took third in the 50-yard freestyle at 30.78 seconds and third in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:18.25. She was on the third-place team in the 200-yard medley relay, which finished in 2:15.98 behind two other Morris teams that had times of 2:04.95 and 2:13.53.

At the University of Montevallo in Alabama, 2024 Medford graduate Kyla Krause is part of the school’s inaugural acrobatics and tumbling team, which off to a 2-3 start in its season, which started with a win at Talladega College on Feb. 12 and runs into mid-April.

The Falcons most recently came up short in a home meet with Wingate University on March 18 by a score of 245.63-236.73. In the synchronized tumbling portion of the meet, Krause was part of the four-athlete quad pass event, where Montevallo outscored Wingate’s team 6.75-6.35. She was one of 22 Falcons to compete in the closing team event. Wingate outscored the Falcons in that 84.43-79.53.

In the team event, teams perform synchronized choreographed skills in a routine set to music. The routines are created with the intent to showcase all skill sets that have been competed in the previous five events. The event has a maximum of 110 points.

In the team’s first-ever meet at Talladega College, Krause was part of the quad pass group that earned a 7.35, which remains the team’s highest quad pass score of the season. The Falcons also outscored Talladega 94.23-86.86 in the team event while winning the meet 245.48-189.55. The Falcons got a 7.1 quad pass score and were edged 86.27-85.44 in the team event at 13th-ranked Saint Leo on Feb. 22.

Montevallo lost its first-ever home meet 243.47-238.25 to Mars Hill on March 7. The quad pass group got a 6.55 then and bumped up to a 6.7 in a 235.975161.62 home win over East Texas Baptist on March 11.

The Falcons are at Presbyterian College tonight, Thursday, in Clinton, S.C. They host Saint Leo on April 10 and Talladega on April 10.

Some early updates from the spring season include: Addison Warner, a 2021 Gilman graduate, had a 6-5 pitching record through 13 starts and 14 appearances for the Columbia College (S.C.). Koalas softball team. Warner had a 3.32 earned run average in 78 innings pitched with 61 strikeouts. On March 14, she shut down the NAIA’s top-ranked offense, Brenau University (Ga.), allowing just five hits in a 4-2 upset win.

Martha Miller, a 2023 Medford graduate, was 2-1 through her first five starts and seven appearances for her new softball team, Macalaster College. Miller transferred from UW-Green Bay in the summer. Miller has a 4.28 earned run average. She threw a two-hit, five-inning shutout in an 8-0 win over Edgewood College on March 17 and threw five innings with four strikeouts in a 10-2 win over UW-Stout on Feb. 15.

Laurissa Klapatauskas, a 2022 Medford graduate, has appeared in two games with three at-bats, a run scored and defensive time at first base so far for the Loras College softball team, which is off to a 12-8 start. The Duhawks are scheduled to play a doubleheader at UW-Stevens Point on Sunday.

Tanner Hraby, a 2024 Medford graduate, hit .333 (eight for 24) with two doubles, five runs batted in and six stolen bases for the UW-River Falls in its seasonopening baseball trip to Florida where the Falcons went 4-2 in the first games of the program’s rebirth after 23 years without a varsity team. Hraby actually recorded the first hit, stolen base and putout in the first game of the team’s new chapter in history. He’s spent most of his time in centerfield so far for the Falcons, who are scheduled to host UW-Stevens Point in doubleheaders Saturday and Sunday at First National Bank of River Falls Field.

This past Sunday, the Falcons split a doubleheader with defending MIAC champion Bethel College at U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the Minnesota Vikings, winning game one 3-2 and losing game two 6-0. Hraby scored the winning run in game one and had a hit in game two.

Michael Borchardt, a 2023 Rib Lake graduate, is in his second baseball season with the University of Northwestern St. Paul. The team went 2-7 on its seasonopening road trip to Florida. The team is now 5-7 after winning its first three games in UMAC play.

Bailey Angell

Erin Bergman

Kyla Krause