The Hatchet cross country teams split their attentions between two meets last week, and fared well in both Thursday’s Three Lakes Invite and Saturday’s Polar Bear Invite at Hortonville.
The boys captured first in both meets, while the girls ran fourth with a full squad on Saturday and fourth on Thursday.
“It was gratifying to see Troy run a smart race and cop his first title with a near P.R. effort,” THS coach John Zuelsdorf said of the Hortonville event. “Additionally, for the boys to win their second title in a week was icing on the cake and a great confidence booster, especially coming off our lack-luster performance at Smiley.
“The heart of our scoring packs worked well together on varsity and JV and pushed each other to seasonal best times on a challenging course that was slightly long as well. Coming off one of our most challenging training phases, we are almost 100% injury free and continuing to improve.”
Junior Troy VanStrydonk pushed from sixth to third mid-race and with 1,000 meters remaining jumped to the front for his first individual varsity invitational championship in a season-best time of 17:52. Also medaling for THS were Tyler Wittmann (11th, 18:41), Austin Kaiser (12th, 18:44) and Jacob McGuire (13th, 18:44). Lucas Tjugum (21st, 19:22), Jared Kiander (23rd, 19:26) competed.
Tomahawk tallied 54 points to undercut West DePere (61) and Hortonville (64). In the girls varsity race, D1 state-ranked Pulaski (29) tipped Hortonville (51) and Tomahawk (61).
The Hatchets’ Dani Whiting (4th, 19:38), Claire Kuehn (13th, 22:20) and Emmy Larson (15th, 22:29) all earned medalists honors, and Maggee Renn (16th, 22:33) and Talyn Jones (21st, 23:01) just missed out. Alex Zedler (29th, 24:10) also ran.
“One of our pre-meet team goals was to challenge for the combined team trophy,” Zuelsdorf said. “We were in the thick of things in every race. We really made Hortonville work to retain the title this year.”
Three Lakes Invite
The boys tied Pines for the win in the 11-team meet and broke that deadlock with sixth runner Eric Zedler.
“Our coaching staff looked at this meet in combination with our meet on Saturday to create a little inner team competition and use it as a qualifier for the trip to Hortonville. It seemed to work, as both our boys and girls improved on their times and ran with a little more sense of urgency.”
“Without the services of our top boys and girls (resting for Saturday), we were pleased with the way our squads responded to the challenge. For our boys to tie Eagle River for the title and our girls to have such a solid showing was great for our mostly younger runners entered.”
VanStrydonk (3rd, 18:26), Wittmann (9th, 18:52) were supported by Alex Johnson (16th, 20:15), Andrew Olson (26th, 20:05), Justin Jarvensivu (27th, 20:15), Zedler (32nd, 20:18) and Cayton Scholz (33rd, 20:19)
The Hatchet girls ranked behind Peshtigo, Rhinelander, and Eagle River. The lone medalist for Tomahawk was senior Alex Zedler (10th, 18:29). Susan Waye (18th), Kate Krueger (23rd), Rylie Swan (25th), Lauren Bauman (33rd, 19:35), Morgan Webster (37th), and Rylie Flohr (39th) were the Hatchets top finishers.
The Hatchets will do their traditional football relay on Friday, bringing the game ball nearly 30 miles from the direction of Cadott in time for the game’s coin toss.