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Head Coach: MJ Laggis – 1st year as head coach

Assistant Coach: Billy Jo Santy – This is her first year coaching Rhinelander CC.

Top Returners: – Boys – Sam Omelia, Lou Bassette, Trent Wild, Jake Zalewski, John Incha, Isaac Wendt, Andrew Stafford; Girls – Annika Hempel, Hallie Wright, Sierra Scarcelli, Haley Klaver, Amelia Fehlen, Hannah Eggers Allison Kubeny, Katy Grulke and Eva O’melia.

Team strengths: Girls – The Strength of our girls team to this point is that we work very hard in practice, have a great attitude, and we have seen our girls improve a lot already early into the year. Eva O’Melia is our fastest returning runner, but because she plays tennis as well, we have not had the benefit of her running a meet yet. I am very happy with the attitude these young ladies bring to practice every day, I am very pleased with their improvement.

Boys – We have some speed with Seniors Sam O’Melia and Lou Bassette. These two have emerged as our top runners, but we have a host of depth and talent behind them. Our boys are competing for those varsity spots every day in practice, and that is what makes them a strong group.

Areas to improve: We have really upped our practice mileage this year from where they were last year. We train with distance, intervals, reset workouts, on hills, and barefoot. Our work ethic has been great. We have 41 runners with the girls and boys combined, and I am stoked at the huge participation.

Season goals: Our goal is to be as competitive as we can be in every meet we are in. We want to continue to drop time inour race results, and of course we want to make some noise at the conference meet and compete with the top teams who should be Lakeland and Tomahawk.