MEDFORD BOYS SOCCER - Raiders find Lakeland still quite good, drop second shootout

The defending Great Northern Conference boys soccer champions haven’t lost much this year as the Medford Raiders found out Tuesday in a 6-0 road loss to Lakeland.

The Thunderbirds remained unbeaten in league play at 4-0 and improved to 5-01 overall while playing their first home game of the season. Marshall Holmquist, again one of the GNC’s leading scorers, struck for three goals, two of which came early. The third started a two-goal flurry in 28 seconds early in the second half that put the game out of reach.

“They’re really good,” Medford head coach Adam Derr said. “They are a very good passing team. After the first 10 minutes, I thought we settled down and played well for the rest of the half. In the second half, we gave up the two goals in 30 seconds. That’s tough. But I thought our guys battled them.”

Lakeland got off 36 shots in the contest and put 30 on goal. Eric Paul was a busy goal keeper, making 24 saves. Medford, meanwhile had two shots, one that T-Bird Talan Pockat had to save.

“Probably about 20 of those saves were difficult saves,” Derr said. “He was all over the place. We threw our bodies in front of a lot of shots.”

Paul’s first save robbed Holmquist just two minutes in. Paul had another tough save on an Ethan Seeliger shot at the 6:20 mark. But at 6:46, the T-Birds were able to invade the scoring area. Connor Erickson lobbed a short right-to-left pass to Holmquist, who headed it in for the game’s first score. At 10:41, Cameron Bernard shot a long pass right through the middle of the field to Holmquist, who won his one-on-one with Paul.

That was all of the scoring for the first half. Lakeland’s quick back-to-back goals that broke the game open came at 49:16 and 49:44. Holmquist got the first one off a Lincoln Friedley assist. Friedley scored the second, assisted by Seeliger.

Holmquist assisted on Friedley’s goal at 54:19. Will Kimball got the last goal at 69:28 with Friedley getting the assist.

Medford fell to 0-3-2 in GNC play and 0-5-2 overall. The week does not get any easier for the Raiders, who travel to Mosinee tonight, Thursday, to take on the Indians, who are off to a 3-1 start in the conference. That game starts at 7 p.m. Medford goes to Shawano Saturday for a noon non-conference kickoff against the Hawks, who beat Medford a year ago 3-0.

Hodags take shootout

Two squads struggling to score in the first three weeks of the season met at Raider Field Thursday and neither one got its offense on track as Medford and Rhinelander played at a 0-0 draw.

Things changed in the penalty-kick shootout for Great Northern Conference points as only one kick out of nine taken did not find the back of the net. The Hodags were a perfect five for five and won the shootout 5-3 to gain two GNC points, while Medford took one. The result left the teams tied at the bottom of the standings with Northland Pines with two points each.

Down a handful of players to a variety of reasons, Medford had to go deep into its bench to get through the JV and varsity games. The Raiders, though, had more control of the ball in the 80 minutes of regulation. Unfortunately, their two best chances, both of which came in the first half, ended in unlucky breaks and the Raiders finished still having just three goals through the season’s first six games.

“We’re playing better. I thought we had our chances,” Derr said. “For large periods of time we played on offense. It’s likely the first time we outshot an opponent in two years. You have to take some positives from that. We played in the offensive zone. We got a couple of good shots. We only gave up one bad play.”

The bad play Derr spoke of was one of only two good chances for an extremely young Rhinelander team that had not scored a goal yet this season coming into the game. Paul took a chance on breaking up a long pass just outside the box area and missed, but Hodag Dean Gillingham missed the open net wide right.

Medford, on the other hand, had a direct kick from Lucas Mahner from 38 yards out hit the crossbar and bounce out 10:25 into the game. At the 22:50 mark, Judah Wipf centered a perfect pass from the right corner to a cutting Oliver Koffler, whose shot hit Hodag defender Landon Catlin in the head and deflected out of bounds.

In the second half, Medford freshman Logan Fisher had a right-to-left shot roll just outside the post at the 60:50 mark. Each team had direct kicks that didn’t find the mark. Rhinelander had a chance late at 76:50, but Paul took the angle away and got the save on a low shot from the left side by Hodag Roan Childs.

“You can’t take away anything from the guys who played today,” Derr said. “Everybody who stepped on the field played pretty well. Atticus Winkler stepped up and played some good minutes in the back. Logan Fisher had a good shot on net. Marshall Buechel had a couple of really nice passes and was making good runs. They were giving guys a little bit of a break so that the starters could come back and keep running.”

Medford had eight shots, three of which were on goal. Rhinelander had six shots, two on goal.

Rhinelander had the first kicks in the five-round penalty kick shootout. Leftfooter Owen Evers got his shot inside the left post, while Raider Carter Ziehlke went to his right and got his shot past Hodag Caden Ehrhardt to tie it at 1-1.

The second round was the key. Hodag Aiden Lueder’s shot hit the crossbar yet still found its way in, while the shot by Raider Beck Mayrer slid wide of the right post, giving Rhinelander at 2-1 lead. Gillingham and Koffler both connected in round three. Catlin and Mahner both scored in round four, making it 4-3 with one round left. Hodag Asher Rivord then drove home a shot to his left, denying Medford’s Ethan Emmerich a chance to tie it.

It was Medford’s second shootout loss of the season. Northland Pines won one at the end of a 1-1 tie on Sept. 4.

“I’m not worried about the penalty shootout,” Derr said. “The 80 minutes is what we’re working on and I thought we played a solid 80 minutes right down to the end. I was happy with the way we played.”