Rudolph shares top honor; 7 Raiders get GNC awards

ALL-GNC BOYS SOCCER

More than half of the starting unit gained All-Great Northern Conference recognition following the Medford Raiders’ championship season of 2022.

Seven Raiders earned some kind of recognition highlighted by senior Zach Rudolph, who was named the conference’s co-Offensive Player of the Year after leading the league in scoring in 10 GNC contests. Senior goal keeper Jake Dassow also made the first team despite missing a chunk of the season with a thumb injury.

The outstanding ball handling senior trio of Silas Wipf, Yonatan “Jimmy” Murillo Aguirre and Naut van Meurs all earned second-team spots and honorable mention went to seniors Aaron Schield and Mason Gripentrog.

The awards come on the heels of Medford’s first outright GNC championship and second league title overall. The Raiders shared the 2019 title with Northland Pines. This year’s team won nine of 10 GNC games with two victories by penalty- kick shootout over Rhinelander and Lakeland. The Raiders’ only loss came in the final regular season to Northland Pines, 1-0.

The senior-laden team had a “state or bust” mantra this year under fourthyear head coach Nathan Bilodeau but came up short when it tied Rhinelander 2-2 in a WIAA Division 3 sectional semifinal and lost the penalty-kick shootout. Rhinelander went on to beat Rice Lake in a penalty-kick shootout after a 0-0 tie in the sectional final that was marred by a noisemaker controversy during the shootout. Medford finished 13-2-4 overall.

Medford’s regional championship came with a 4-0 win over Mosinee on Oct. 22 and was the team’s second in three years.

Rudolph shared the Offensive Player of the Year award with 2021 winner Yaroslav Myshchyshyn of Lakeland. The two were, without question, the two most dominant offensive forces in the sixteam conference. Rudolph’s first-team selection was his second in a row. He also was a second-team pick as a sophomore in 2020.

Rudolph had 19 goals in league play compared to Myshchyshyn’s 18 and his 41 total points, which included three assists, beat Myshchyshyn by four. Overall, Rudolph led Medford with 34 goals and 78 points, which included 10 assists. He filled Medford’s striker role for most of the season, but also played well in a middle position at times late in the year when the Raiders moved the talented van Meurs up top.

In GNC play, Rudolph had five goals and two assists in a 13-0 rout of Antigo on Oct. 6, four goals and an assist in a 9-0 win at Antigo on Sept. 13, a big hat trick in a key 3-0 win at Rhinelander on Sept. 22 and a hat trick in a tone-setting 4-1 home win over Lakeland on Sept. 1. His goal at Lakeland tied the game at 1-1, leading to Medford’s shootout win. He scored the team’s goal in the 1-1 tie with Rhinelander on Aug. 30 that ended with Medford’s win on penalty kicks. He scored twice in a 3-2 win at Northland Pines on Sept. 27.

In non-conference highlights, Rudolph had two goals in a 3-3 tie at Marshfield on Sept. 6, a hat trick in Medford’s regional semifinal win over Antigo and two goals in the regional final win over Mosinee.

Dassow’s first All-GNC honor follows a season where he led the conference in save percentage at .897 and goals against average at 0.62. In 462 GNC minutes, Dassow posted a 5-1 record and allowed just three goals on 29 shots on goal. He earned late-season shutouts over Mosinee (1-0) and Antigo (13-0). He also was in goal for the post-season shutout over Mosinee and early-season shutouts of Shawano and New London.

Dassow allowed just eight goals overall in nearly 900 minutes played.

Rudolph and Dassow join Myshchyshyn, co-Defensive Players of the Year Ryan Muench of Northland Pines and Charlie Heck of Rhinelander, Chandler Savel and Tyler Tharman of Lakeland, Garret Donohue of Mosinee, Cameron Birchbauer of Northland Pines and Will Quinn and Braden Mork of Rhinelander on the All-GNC first team.

Wipf, van Meurs, Murillo Aguiree and Schield were highly responsible for one of Medford’s team strengths -- possessing the ball. All showed outstanding ability to control the ball, win possession on 5050 balls and pass the ball. In fact, Schield was the GNC leader in assists with eight as he earned All-GNC honorable mention for the third straight season.

Wipf, who earned second-team honors for the second straight fall, emerged as a much bigger scoring threat this fall. He tied Mosinee’s Jaeger Dhein for fourth in the GNC with eight goals, plus he had three assists in league play. Overall, he scored 17 goals to rank third on the team and had seven assists. Wipf had hat tricks in both regular-season wins over Antigo and had two goals in each of Medford’s first two non-conference wins over Baldwin-Woodville and Shawano. He had the team’s only goal in a 1-0 win at Mosinee on Sept. 8.

Murillo Aguirre and van Meurs were both key additions that made the Raiders even stronger than they expected to be in 2022. Using his size, strength and ball handling skills, van Meurs had five goals and three assists in league play to score 13 points, while the smaller but ultra-quick and scrappy Murillo Aguirre had a goal and four assists. Van Meurs scored five goals in Medford’s 11-0 regional semifinal win over Antigo and had two more in the regional final win over Mosinee. He had one goal in sectional semifinal with Rhinelander and finished with 19 overall. Murillo Aguirre had two goals and seven assists.

Schield ended the season with four goals and 13 assists. He had four assists in the 9-0 win at Antigo and three against Antigo in the regional semifinal.

Gripentrog’s first All-GNC honor was a result of the work he did on Medford’s back defensive line with fellow seniors Vincent Seidel and Caden Tessmann. The Raiders led the GNC with just six goals allowed in 10 GNC games and allowed just 14 goals all season long for an average of 0.7 goals per game. The Raiders shut out their opponents in 10 of 19 games. Gripentrog had the lone goal in Medford’s 1-0 win over Mosinee on Oct. 4 that clinched at least a share of the GNC title. He had two goals overall and he had the winning penalty kick in the Aug. 30 shootout with Rhinelander.

The strength of this year’s conference showed with all teams but Antigo playing in a regional final. Northland Pines, despite finishing just 5-12-4 made it all the way to a WIAA Division 4 sectional final, losing 2-1 to La Crosse Aquinas. Rhinelander gave top-seeded Green Bay Notre Dame all it could handle in a monsoon during Friday’s WIAA Division 3 state semifinal in Milwaukee, falling 2-1.

Jake Dassow First Team

Silas Wipf Second Team

Yonatan Murillo Aguirre Second Team

Naut van Meurs Second Team

Aaron Schield Hon. Mention

Mason Gripentrog Hon. Mention