Round three of Raiders/Hodags to decide who goes to Saturday’s final

WIAA DIV. 3 BOYS SOCCER SECTIONAL PREVIEW

The Medford Raiders didn’t have to do too much advance scouting to get through the regional rounds of the WIAA Division 3 boys soccer tournament.

They won’t have to do much at the start of sectional week either.

Now two wins away from a berth in the Nov. 4-5 WIAA state tournament in Milwaukee, the Raiders draw their third straight Great Northern Conference rival in post-season play with the Rhinelander Hodags coming to town tonight, Thursday, for a 7 p.m. sectional semifinal at Raider Field.

The teams have had some tense battles in the four years Nathan Bilodeau has been Medford’s head coach. But the important ones recently have gone Medford’s way, including a 2-0 win in a Division 2 sectional semifinal during the Covid season of 2020 and a penalty-kick shootout victory in a Division 3 regional semifinal last fall after the teams tied 1-1 through regulation and double overtime.

This season started with the teams going to another shootout after a 1-1 tie, which Medford won again in the GNC opener on Aug. 30. The Raiders then got a key 3-0 win at Rhinelander on Sept. 22 behind a hat trick from senior co-captain Zach Rudolph.

“The goal is state and our eyes are still set on that and we have to take it one game at a time,” Bilodeau said Tuesday. “Obviously getting through regionals was a big win for us and here we are in the sectional semifinals playing another conference opponent. It’s kind of funny the way our sectional played out.

“We’ve played Rhinelander twice,” he added. “The good and the bad is we tied them once, we beat them once. Let’s beat them again. Good news is we know what we’re getting into, the bad news is we know what we’re getting into. But I still think there’s an advantage there because we’ve played already. We know what to expect. We can prepare for that. We can prepare for their style of play, their players, their strengths, their weaknesses. We can dedicate our practice time to beating a single opponent.”

While Medford won the GNC championship and secured the sectional halfbracket’s number-one seed by essentially going 7-1-2 in league play and winning its two post-tie shootouts, Rhinelander tied Lakeland for second place with its 6-22 mark that included a split in post-tie shootouts. Speaking of shootouts, Rhinelander and Lakeland got into one in the regional final round Saturday after they played to a 0-0 double-overtime tie. The Hodags won the shootout 3-1 to advance to tonight’s match.

Medford beat Mosinee 4-0 in its regional final Saturday night. Two nights earlier, the Raiders routed GNC cellardweller Antigo 11-0. “It’s just another step forward in the conference pretty much,” Rudolph said Saturday after the win over Mosinee. “It’s another round of conference play. It’s basically how are we going to move forward from this. We can celebrate this one tonight, but as soon as Monday comes around, it’s right back to the lab and get to work.”

In conference play this season, the Hodags (11-2-4 overall) got nine goals from Braden Mork and five each from Shane Petrick and Kyle Wiese. The Raiders got 19 from Rudolph, the conference leader, eight more from Silas Wipf and five from Naut van Meurs, who notched seven in the regional wins –– five against Antigo and two against Mosinee.

Raider Aaron Schield led the conference in assists with eight, while Adyn Gripentrog added six in league play.

The Raiders (13-2-3) are confident they can match up offensively with any team they’ll face from here on out. The key Thursday will be to make sure Rhinelander doesn’t get many kicks out of what the Hodags do best.

“Rhinelander has phenomenal athletes on their team,” Bilodeau said. “They’re fast, they’re tough. They’re physical. They like to play long ball where they just kind of kick it up to their strikers and hope they run onto it and score goals. They’ve been successful because they have athletes. They have guys who can do that.

“Our game plan is to obviously shut down the long ball,” he added. “If it does come through, we have to close it down right away and allow shots on (goal keeper) Jake (Dassow) to be at a minimum and then just beat them with our possession, our speed and our soccer ability.”

That soccer ability showed in the second game against Rhinelander when Medford may have played one of its best halves of the season. The Raiders had a significant advantage in possession time after halftime and were to snuff out the few chances Rhinelander had to score on Medford’s back-up goalie Ken Pace.

Bilodeau said the Raiders know Rhinelander will come in with some extra motivation considering how some of the last few meetings between the teams have gone. The rivalry has become one of the more intense ones in all conference sports in recent years, but he’s confident the Raiders will maintain focus.

“Our guys are pretty level-headed,” he said. “They don’t get too jacked up or emotional about that stuff. They’re more like, we’re just here to win. We just want to take care of business. There’s always that sense of rivalry, but if there’s any game that meant more to them this year than any game we’ve played so far it was the Mosinee game. That was really impactful for those guys to come out swinging and wanting to win that game. Now we need to do it again and I’m confident they will.”

Tonight’s winner will advance to the sectional championship game Saturday in Rice Lake. The opponent will be either Rice Lake, the third seed on that side of the bracket, or the top-seeded team from Spooner-Shell Lake. They meet at 7 p.m. tonight in Spooner.

Medford and Rice Lake last met in a 2020 Division 2 sectional final. The teams played to a scoreless double-overtime tie before the Raiders won the shootout to advance to state at the end of the Covidaffected season. The Warriors are 9-9-3 overall but, as always, they’ve been hardened by playing in the Big Rivers Conference, a league of Division 1 and 2 teams and have used that experience to their advantage in the Division 3 post-season. They went 3-6-1 in league play, including a 4-0 loss and a 3-3 tie with New Richmond, who beat Medford 2-1 way back on Aug. 27.

Rhinelander won at Rice Lake 4-2 on Sept. 16. The other common opponent Medford and Rice Lake have is Baldwin-Woodville. Medford beat the Blackhawks 5-1 in its season opener on Aug. 23. Rice Lake lost at Baldwin-Woodville 2-1 to end the regular season on Oct. 13 but made a return trip there and beat the Blackhawks 3-2 in Saturday’s regional final.

Spooner-Shell Lake is 17-2-1 and won the Heart O’ North Conference with a perfect 12-0 mark. The Heart O’North was not overly strong in 2022. Washburn-Bayfield (8-5-3) and Barron (10-10-4) were the only other teams with overall records at .500 or above. Washburn-Bayfield finished second in the conference standings at 7-4-1.

The Rails do have one of the state’s top goal scorers, however, in senior Landon Dennen, who has 50 of them in 20 games, including 28 in league play.

Spooner-Shell Lake and Rice Lake played to a 4-4 tie back on Aug. 27. in Rice Lake. Spooner-Shell Lake’s losses were 3-2 to Somerset on Oct. 4 and 2-0 at Superior on Oct. 10.