ONALASKA 36, MEDFORD 0 - After first drive fizzles, Onalaska makes it tough on Raiders

Round two of a season-opening gauntlet through two of the Mississippi Valley Conference’s top football contenders didn’t go much better than the first one for the Medford Raiders, who were shut out 36-0 at Onalaska Friday to fall to 0-2.

Senior quarterback Ian Kowal was six for nine for 105 yards and threw three touchdown passes for the Hilltoppers, who improved to 2-0 in the nonconference portion of their schedule.

Medford, coming off a 55-16 loss to Holmen in week one, had a chance to make an early statement, putting together a game-opening drive that took nearly 8:30 off the clock. But, after a penalty, it stalled at Onalaska’s 13. The Hilltoppers quickly went the other way, scoring on a 64-yard touchdown run by Carson Zinnecker, who broke two tackles in the backfield and then had nothing but green grass in front of him.

Medford’s opening drive had included a fourth-and-one conversion at the Raiders’ own 32, with Sawyer Elsner just getting enough to pick it up, a 32-yard run by Will Wojcik to get Medford into Onalaska territory, a 15-yard burst from Colton Soczka and another 1-yard gain from Elsner on fourth and one to get first and goal at the eight.

“We did have some improvement,” Medford head coach Ted Wilson said. “We got a little bit better. The first drive showed some promising things. We don’t quite have the explosiveness that we had in the past couple years with Paxton and Evan Wilkins and some of those guys. So we really have to do things right. It’s kind of a grind and sometimes little mistakes can really hurt us.”

After that, the Raiders had a tough time moving the ball, picking up only five more first downs the rest of the way.

Onalaska, however, had no such trouble.

The Hilltoppers’ second possession went 66 yards and ended with Kowal’s 16yard scoring pass over the middle to tight end Jackson Egan. A 60-yard third drive included a 34-yard run by Luke Siegel on a reverse and ended with more trickery when Tristan Molling threw back to Kowal for a 5-yard touchdown pass that made it 22-0 with 3:08 before halftime.

A bad punt snap ended with Medford’s Nick Krause being tackled for an 11-yard loss at Onalaska’s 29 with 1:37 left. The Hilltoppers needed just three plays to the back-breaking score before the half with Kowal and Egan again connecting for another 16-yard touchdown over the middle with 41.4 seconds left to open up a 29-0 lead for the home team.

“Defensively we made some gains, but we are very, very young over there,” Wilson said. “Eye discipline is a very difficult thing to learn and understanding that your key is what’s going to tell you what’s going on instead of peeking into the backfield. We have some issues with that. It’s an experience thing. It’s something that I think our kids are capable of learning and hopefully going forward we’ll start to rectify that.”

It didn’t take long for Onalaska to deliver the final dagger. On the second play from scrimmage in the third quarter, Kowal went deep down the middle and found Seigel behind the defense for a 48yard touchdown pass that put the running clock into effect.

The Hilltoppers threatened to score again on their next lengthy possession, but Medford got a fourth-down stop at the 4yard line five minutes into the fourth quarter.

The Raiders finished with 135 yards rushing on 43 attempts. Sixty-four of those yards came on the first drive.

Elsner had 64 yards on 21 attempts, Wojcik gained 55 yards on eight carries and Soczka had 25 yards on six attempts. Krause was unable to complete any of his six pass attempts.

Penalties were a bigger factor in this game than they were in week one. Medford was flagged for nine infractions for 60 yards. Onalaska had seven penalties for 50 yards.

Along with 131 passing yards, Onalaska also ran 214 yards, led by 88 yards on 12 carries from Kaeson Stettler.

“They’re a good football team,” Wilson said. “They have a good football program over there. They have a lot of kids out. They’re very athletic. They have a real nice run-to-pass mix.

“We did have improvements,” he continued. “The kids did better especially offensively. With blocking we’ve definitely cut down on some of our mistakes as far as stepping with the correct foot, getting into the correct position. We have to learn, and this is part of the growth process, to adjust on the fly a little bit. We can’t go over every single eventuality that could show up.

Even though we talk a lot about things of that nature and try to go over all of the situations that we can, sometimes kids and coaches do things that you didn’t expect, so your kids have to adjust on the fly a little bit. That comes with experience and we’re not very experienced.”

Medford moves into Great Northern Conference play this week, traveling to 1-1 Antigo for a 7 p.m. kickoff on Friday.

“No two teams are exactly the same,” Wilson said. “We’ll see another team that’s a little bit different this week. Antigo has some different formations and some different things they like to do compared to the other two. It’s good to make sure we’re getting those different experiences so that if you do find a way to make the playoffs that we have the ability to say we’ve seen something similar to this before and we’re going to be able to draw from that experience.”