Sports

Coming into the season, Kirk Hirst knew his young players would take their lumps.

The Oconto Falls boys basketball coach wanted 100 percent effort from his guys while they learn how to play at the varsity level. Hirst didn’t get the effort he desired on Monday night.

Taking on Oconto, the Panthers hung close midway through the opening half, trailing 20-11. But Oconto went on a 19-0 run before halftime and padded its lead in the second half en route to a 77-28 nonconference win in Oconto Falls.

Oconto has now won five straight games in the rivalry.

“I’m disappointed in our guys,” Hirst said. “I’m not disappointed in the freshmen and sophomores, the guys that played last. I’m not disappointed in them at all. They came out and played their living butt off. I’m disappointed in the guys that supposedly are supposed to be the starters. They didn’t play with any energy; they didn’t play with anything.

The last time the Peshtigo girls basketball team lost a Marinette & Oconto Conference game was Feb. 6, 2014.

Gillett gave Peshtigo a run for its money Dec. 13 and nearly ended its 42-game conference winning streak.

Gillett was within one point on three separate occasions but could never take the lead, falling to visiting Peshtigo, 52-46.

The Tigers had to play catch-up the entire game, which finally took its toll at the end.

Playing from behind is “something you expect when you play Peshtigo,” Gillett coach Justin Daul said. “I’ve been in this league now for five years and we’ve done it every time. It’s expected.

It was a game the Oconto Falls girls basketball players will want to quickly forget.

The Panthers scored just 4 first-half points and struggled against Denmark’s full-court, pressing defense as the visiting Vikings won 52-23 in a North Eastern Conference matchup Friday.

“This is the first team we’ve played that has the athletes to pressure us and we can’t match that intensity,” Oconto Falls coach Mike Kaczmarek said. “They came out and pressured us, and we did not respond at all.”

Oconto Falls was just 2 for 21 from the field in the opening half. The team finished the game with 27 turnovers and nine field goals.

Kaczmarek prepared his girls for Denmark’s pressure, but Oconto Falls had a tough time getting into its offense.

Gillett/Suring coach Brian Tesch knew this week was going to be a challenge for his wrestlers.

The Tigers fell to Southern Door, 46-27, Thursday, just two days after facing Division 3 foe Bonduel and Division 2 powerhouse Wittenberg-Birnamwood.

After topping Bonduel and falling to Wittenberg-Birnamwood, the Tigers faced a different challenge with Southern Door.

“(Southern Door) had a lot more experience in a lot of weights than we did,” Tesch said. “A lot of my guys went out there, they tried hard. It was obvious they were doing the things we were trying in practice. They are making gains where we need to, but wrestling, it takes a while to learn the sport.”

Senior Dante Carlson, who secured a pin in 2 minutes and 36 seconds in his 220-pound match with Mason Davis, was one of five Gillett/Suring athletes to earn a victory Thursday.

Oconto Falls senior Bryce Ash won the 152-pound title at the Battle on the Bay wrestling invitational Saturday at Bay Port High School.

Ash pinned his first three opponents, defeated River Valley’s Gavin Wipperfurth 5-0 and then earned a major decision in the title match over Freedom’s Evan Vosters.

Five other Falls wrestlers finished in the top six at the tournament, with Mac Winkler taking second place and Nate Trepanier placing third.

Winkler won by decision and pin to advance to the 195-pound championship round, where he was pinned in under a minute by Pewaukee’s Jacob Raschka.

At 160 pounds, Nate Trepanier lost in an ultimate tiebreaker to Southern Door’s Michael Bertrand, 5-4, in the semifinal. He then toppled Wrightstown’s Ben Klister, whom he defeated in last year’s Division 2 state title match, 5-3, for third place.

It was quite telling when the starting lineups were announced: The Clintonville boys basketball team had four seniors starting, while Oconto Falls had just one.

It was experience vs. youth.

In most cases, experience wins out. That was certainly the case on Friday night.

Clintonville turned a 4-point game midway through the first half into a 23-point cushion midway through the second half as the Truckers downed Oconto Falls, 60-29, in the North Eastern Conference opener for both schools.

“I told the guys, ‘These guys have been playing since they were freshman,’” Oconto Falls coach Kirk Hirst said about Clintonville’s experience. “I told them the only thing I’m upset with them is at our effort. I told these guys, ‘I never thought we’d have somebody outhustle us.’”

Marc Kinziger wants his guys to be aggressive on the mat this season.

The tri-head coach of the Oconto Falls wrestling team was impressed with how his athletes opened the season on Thursday.

Oconto Falls took full advantage off all their opportunities and the wrestlers took it to Little Chute early and often in a 78-6 victory in a North Eastern Conference meet in Oconto Falls.

“It’s always good to get the cobwebs off and the dust off and get going and kind of get back into the swing of things,” Kinziger said. “For the most part, they looked good – they were aggressive. Our main goal was to kind of go out with a senior team and a heavy veteran team, it was ready to go out and be aggressive and get to them, and I thought they did that.”

Garrett Cole showed just how aggressive the Panthers are going to be this season by recording the team’s second pin under one minute.

Just one year removed from a 9-point loss to Two Rivers in the team sectional, the Oconto Falls wrestling team knows it can do better.

The Panthers lost one senior, Kyle Wolf, from the sectional competing team.

“I think about it a lot actually, about what we could have done and where we could have changed and what we could have done differently,” senior Bryce Ash said of the team sectional competition. “And we definitely could have beaten them if we tried a little bit harder and did what we were supposed to.”

After Oconto Falls built a 23-3 lead through the 195-pound weight class, Two Rivers dominated the remainder of the match, scoring 32 points to the Panthers’ three.

Tri-head coach David Brasier said he hopes the experience resonates with the returning athletes, especially with small changes that could pay off down the stretch.

Jim Keeffe learned quite a bit about his team in the second game of the season.

He mainly realized his guys are resilient.

The Suring boys basketball team trailed by three points late against Bonduel, but the young Eagles responded with an 8-0 run. Then, Suring had to hold off a late push by the Bears to secure a 47-45 victory at home in nonconference action on Monday at home.

“I know they’re not going to quit,” said Keeffe, Suring’s coach. “I’ve got some gamers in there, and I don’t think there’s a quitter in that group.”

It’s the first time in four years Suring has knocked off Bonduel. The Bears had won the previous three matchups.

“I told the kids I thought we played really hard, I just love that,” Bonduel coach Duke Copp said. “They played with great effort, competing. We’re just young. Most of these kids haven’t even played varsity, so it’s going to be a little while. We had some mental breakdowns at the end and missed some easy bunnies.”

After a 2-point loss in the opening round of the Lena Holiday Tournament, the Wildcats rebounded with a 12-point victory over Sevastopol on Saturday to take third place.

Ally Demmith posted a team-high 14 points in the consolation victory, while Brianna Sylvester added 12 points for the hosts.

Lena made just 9 of 23 free throws but kept the Pioneers off the free-throw line with just four attempts.

Trailing by 2 points at the half, the Wildcats nearly doubled Sevastopol in scoring in the second half, 29-15, to pull away with the victory.

In the opening round, Lena trailed Elcho at the break, before the second-half comeback attempt was thwarted by the Hornets, who were paced by Kenzie Novak’s 21 points.

The Wildcats outscored Elcho 28-22 in the second half.