Medford holds top spot going into Saturday’s GNC meet

MEDFORD WRESTLING

The end of the wrestling season will have some changes, but with confirmation that they will have a conference meet and a post-season gives the Medford Raiders goals to focus on in the final month.

The Raiders took another step toward clinching a third straight Great Northern Conference championship on Thursday when they took care of Rhinelander 51-27 to finish 5-0 in GNC duals. They will be in the driver’s seat heading into the GNC tournament which will be held Saturday with some attempted social distancing in the new Hodag Dome in Rhinelander.

Tomahawk sits in second place, two points behind Medford after going 4-1 in the duals and, realistically, is the only team with a chance to catch the Raiders. They would at least clinch an overall title tie by outscoring Medford Saturday. The Raiders will be the undisputed champs if they outscore the Hatchets.

“This is a pretty exciting time of the season,” Medford head coach Brandon Marcis said Monday. “Obviously we’re really excited that conference, regionals, sectionals and state are all going to happen. Obviously it’s not going to look exactly the same like everything else in the time of COVID. But we have it, so that’s really exciting because that gives us a good focus in practice to train hard, to get tired, then train harder and get more tired and take advantage of that super compensation effect so we can just get the most out of our performance when it comes time to compete.”

The WIAA released revised tournament assignments and procedures late Friday afternoon and relaxed multi-team tournament rules to allow for six teams at an event Jan. 17-23. That allows the GNC meet to happen.

For the individual WIAA tournament, the top two individuals in each regional weight class will advance to sectional competition. Then the top two individuals in each weight class at sectionals will advance to a one-day state tournament on Feb. 13. For Division 2, the state meet will be hosted by Adams-Friendship High School. Medford remains assigned to the Regis-Altoona regional on Jan. 30 and the Neillsville sectional on Feb. 6.

Regionals and sectionals will wrestle back to second place with the top six places scoring. For the team tournament, teams qualifying for state on Feb. 20 –– also at Adams-Friendship –– will be determined by point values assigned to individual placements in determining sectional team scores. Sectional champions in Division 2 will advance to state.

“We’re really grateful that they came around with that,” Marcis said. “Granted that state’s not going to be at the Kohl Center or in Madison. But we still have dates, we’ve got the tourney and something to work toward, so that’s exciting for us.”

In Tomahawk Thursday, Medford got its official GNC dual with Rhinelander in and then finished the night trying to get in as many exhibition matches as possible.

Overall the theme of the night was kinda making up for lost time on matches and just getting kids good, quality matches as best we could,” he said.

Against the Hodags, Owen Kurtz pinned Medford’s Braxton Weissmiller to start the meet at 285 pounds, but Medford got a forfeit win from Thaddeus Sigmund at 106 pounds and pins from Jude Stark at 113 pounds and Ty Sova at 120 pounds to go up 12-6.

“I think just in general my little guys have been really good at starting us off right,” Marcis said. “They’ve been real aggressive, real good about getting points on the board for us.”

Tim Fox pinned Medford’s Itsael Medina Fuentes at 126 pounds and Raider Eli Mahner lost a close 6-2 decision at 132 pounds. Those results left Medford with Wrestling enters stretch run

an 18-15 lead.

But Carson Church started a big Raider run by pinning his man at 138 pounds. Trevon Drallmeier took a forfeit at 145, Emett Grunwald got a pin at 152, Logan Kawa earned an 11-4 decision at 160 pounds and Oscar Hinderliter took a forfeit at 170 to build a 45-15 lead that assured Medford of a win.

Wyatt Johnson got a pin at 195 pounds for Medford’s final points. Hodag stand- out Ben Sinclair pinned Dalton Krug at 220 pounds and the Raiders forfeited at 182.

“We had a good dual,” Marcis said. “We wrestled tough. They had some forfeits, so obviously we took advantage of that. One of our biggest challenges now at this point in the season is we are 5-0 in the conference, which is nice because we’re sitting at the top. But man this is the time where we have to pick it up. We can’t be satisfied with what we have.”