Sports

Athlete: Parker Pues

Sport: Track

Event: Long jump

School: Shawano Community High School

Year: Junior

Parker Pues will end his junior track season at the 2018 State Track & Field Championships, competing in the long jump against Division 1 athletes from around the state. Pues earned his spot at the state meet after finishing second in the event at the Ashwaubenon Sectional, leaping to a distance of 22 feet, 7 inches. The mark gives Pues the fourth-best jump heading into state among all the Division 1 long jumpers.

Pues narrowly missed qualifying for state in the 100-meter dash, taking fourth at sectionals. His time of 11.14 tied the Shawano school record. The junior was also a part of the Hawks’ 4x200 relay team this season.

Q When did your interest in track begin?

A Seventh grade, when I found out I was decent at it.

Q What’s your favorite part about a track meet or the track season?

TRACK

Reiter qualifies for state meet

Menominee Indian’s Jarin Reiter has appeared in sectionals four different times but never qualified for state.

That all changed on Thursday night, when Reiter took fourth in the 400-meter dash at the Division 3 Marathon Sectional to punch his ticket to state.

Reiter finished the 400 in 52.69 seconds.

BASEBALL

Bonduel 8

Shawano 6

The Bonduel baseball team outslugged Shawano in a nonconference clash on Thursday night.

Jordan Boldt, Wyatt Erb and Bryce Maule each tallied two hits to lead the Bears at the plate. Boldt also earned the win on the hill, striking out six batters while allowing three unearned runs over 4 2/3 innings.

Alex Hoffman led Shawano at the plate with a pair of hits, including one double. Brad Bartz suffered the loss, allowing five runs, three of which were earned, over three innings.

Thursday’s WIAA Regional scores

Northern Division

Eland 3

Wittenberg 2

Ryan Hubachek doubled and homered to lead Eland past Wittenberg in a low-scoring contest.

Jarod Richter picked up the win on the mound for Eland while Erik Steigerwald suffered the loss for Wittenberg.

Heinrich Walder and Eric Steigerwald each tallied two hits for Wittenberg.

Polar 3

Birnamwood 2

Polar edged Birnamwood in another tight contest.

Kyle Wagoner picked up the win on the mound for Polar. Birnamwood was held to just two hits in the game.

Austin Reed was dealt the tough loss. Polar only had five hits.

Elderon 2

Aniwa 0

Marvin Meronk and Justin Meronk each homered to provide the offense in Elderon’s shutout win over Aniwa.

Adam Janikowski earned the win on the mound while Aniwa’s Denton Mortenson took the loss.

South Central Division

Plover 13

Weymont 2

The term “fake news” has come to mean many different things. For some, it refers to false stories created by social media tricksters who mix a few facts with a lot of falsehoods and then get unsuspecting Facebook, Instagram or Twitter users to forward them again and again.

Facebook has been reporting on how they are taking steps to stop the spread of false stories. OK, who will decide what’s false? I frankly don’t have a lot of faith in Zuckerberg and his minions.

YouTube, in their effort to be politically correct, has hamstrung many video creators who provide good and factual information on firearms and shooting. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but as one post pointed out, they still allow crazy things like a guy telling people to take turpentine for health reasons.

Yikes.

A Kendall Prevost three-run homer capped a four-run first inning for Luxemburg-Casco in a Division 2 regional playoff matchup against Shawano on Wednesday afternoon.

From there, the Hawks’ pitching duo of Taylor Johnson and Gracyn Habeck held the hosts in check while the Shawano offense started to chip into the deficit.

With the score knotted at four, Shawano courtesy runner Elizabeth Esch scored the game-winning run on a clutch hit from pinch-hitter Abigail Vomastic in the fifth inning, giving the sixth-seeded Hawks a 5-4 upset win over the third-seeded Spartans.

“Before the game, I told her (Abigail) ‘You’re our first pinch-hitter, and you have a chance to make a difference,’” Shawano coach Brian Johnson said. “What a huge moment for the sophomore to come up and rip a shot down the third base line to put us ahead.”

Vomastic’s hit was just one of many clutch at-bats the balanced Hawks’ offense put together in the game.

BASEBALL

Shawano 1

Menasha 0,

Shawano 4

Menasha 3

The Shawano baseball team earned a pair of extra-inning wins over Menasha in a Bay Conference doubleheader on Tuesday. The Hawks claimed game one in nine innings before earning a victory in eight innings in the second game.

Brad Bartz delivered the game-winning RBI single for Shawano in the first game. Casey Baumann earned the win on the mound after allowing just four hits while striking out seven batters over eight strong innings. Issac Buntrock picked up the save after tossing a scoreless ninth inning.

Bartz again provided the heroics for the Hawks in game two, coming through with a RBI single in the eighth inning to win it. Buntrock earned the win after tossing three scoreless relief innings. Jacob Lacy, Nick Grignon and Bartz each tallied two hits in the contest.

Shawano finished third in the conference with a 7-5 record.

Sturgeon Bay 7

Bonduel 6

As the Milwaukee Brewers wend their way through the four-team scrum in the National League Central Division, it’s instructive to remember that riding high in May doesn’t amount to much in October.

The Brewers led their division for a surprising 69 days last year but in the end their 86-76 record left them in second place, six games out. An even more discouraging number was the one game they finished behind Colorado for the final wild card berth.

Wire-to-wire championships are rare; only five teams in Major League Baseball history have led their division or league from Opening Day and gone on to win the World Series.

Four-team pennant races – like the one percolating in the NL Central, where two games separate the first-place Brewers, Chicago, St. Louis and Pittsburgh – are equally rare.

A year ago, the Shawano track team sent a total of four athletes to sectionals.

This year, the Hawks saw nine individuals plus one relay team qualify for sectionals after placing in the top-four finishers at the Division 1 Bay Port regional on a cold and rainy Monday evening.

Both the boys and girls teams earned fifth-place finishes, scoring 62 and 56 points, respectively.

With less-than-ideal weather conditions, Shawano coach Dave Hanssen told his athletes to do whatever it takes to make it to sectionals. The team was less focused on earning first-place finishes and more determined to avoid injuries.

Despite the cautious approach, the Hawks still turned in a handful of standout performances, led by Payden Buck’s first-place finish in the pole vault.

Despite a warm and sunny afternoon, the Bowler softball team could not seem to get its bats heated up through the first four innings of a Division 5 regional opener against Oneida Nation.

The seventh-seeded Panthers turned things around at just the right time, scoring all seven of its runs over the final three innings to earn a 7-6 walk-off win over the 10th-seeded Thunderhawks in Bowler on Tuesday.

The reason behind the Panthers slow start at the plate was Thunderhawks’ starting pitcher Tiara Barber, who did not allow a run over the first four innings.

Bowler was able to put a pair of runs on the scoreboard in the fifth inning, but still trailed 4-2. After the visitors tacked on two more runs in the sixth, the Panthers answered with two runs of their own to again cut the deficit to two.

The Shawano boys tennis team left it all out on the court at the Division 2 Rhinelander Subsectional on Monday.

The Hawks earned three wins on the day but failed to advance any singles players or doubles duos to sectionals.

Camden Kroll earned a win for Shawano at No. 4 singles, downing Antigo’s Jerome Jones in straight sets. The No. 2 doubles team of Chris Black and Levi Johnson earned a straight set win in their first match while the No. 3 doubles duo of Wyatt Theis and Rhain Rodenbeck picked up a three-set win.

The team will graduate Carter Peplinski, Harrison Sturycz and Johnson.