WAUSAU EAST 31, MEDFORD 8 - Lost early chances, rough third quarter spell defeat at East

The Medford Raiders took a big step forward in week five with an upset win over then-unbeaten Lakeland, but that progress was halted Friday in a mistakefilled 31-8 loss to Wausau East at Thom Field.

The Raiders had their chances early, driving into the red zone on their first three possessions. But, they only got to the end zone on one of those drives and trailed 7-6 at halftime.

The Lumberjacks, however, gained momentum and confidence with each defensive stop, starting in the second quarter. They scored on their first drive after halftime and buried Medford by scoring three third-quarter touchdowns with Kayden Meverden’s 85-yard interception return being the dagger with 46 seconds left in the quarter.

With its first GNC win of the fall, East improved to 1-3 in league play and 2-4 overall. Medford also is 2-4 overall but 2-2 in the GNC.

“Pretty disappointing,” was how head coach Ted Wilson summed it up. “Our kids play really hard. I’m proud of how hard they play. But we just make a lot of mistakes and those mistakes are not by any one player. If we have five plays, it’s five different ones that might make one mistake on a play. It’s hard for us to get any consistent drives together or to be able to finish drives.”

Medford had its fair share of good moments offensively. The Raiders ran for 328 yards, led by Sawyer Elsner’s 136 yards on 24 carries and Will Wojcik’s 135 yards on 16 attempts. But when they needed a play near the goal or in shortyardage situations, that play rarely came.

“I will take some of the blame for some of the play calling there on the shortyardage stuff,” Wilson said. “But again, no matter what you call down there, if you don’t execute what’s been called, it’s not going to be successful. Whether it’s trying to play action to try to throw the ball or trying to spread them out, if we don’t make key blocks or do key things without mistakes, it’s not going to be successful.

“But going forward, I definitely need to do a better job of mixing and matching in those situations,” he added. “Also our kids need to execute along with that. Going together going forward, hopefully we can get that corrected between the play-calling and our execution.”

Medford’s first drive of the game got to East’s 15, but an incomplete pass and a 5yard penalty got Medford behind the chains and East’s Iahn Stahel intercepted a fourth-down pass at the 10.

East debuted a new starter at quarterback, sophomore Camdyn Rye, and he had a memorable first play, rolling to his left and finding a wide-open Tanner Kostroski, who got free following a collision by two Raiders in the defensive backfield and had an easy 90-yard catch and run.

“The collision was the outcome, but we were beat deep in the first place because our eyes were not where they were supposed to be,” Wilson said.

Medford had a strong response, methodically driving back into East territory and, this time, paying off the 80yard, 13-play drive with a 2-yard touchdown run by Carson Ingersoll. A penalty on the two-point conversion pushed Medford back 10 yards on the retry and the pass failed, keeping the Raiders behind 7-6.

The defense forced a quick punt and the offense seemed poised to strike again. A 15-yard run by Elsner and a 41-yard burst up the left side by Wojcik got Medford into East territory and a 19-yard run by Wojcik got the Raiders to the 12. Colton Soczka gained eight on first down, the Lumberjacks bottled up the next three runs, stopping the drive at the five with 7:10 left in the second quarter.

Stahel, who ran for 160 yards for Wausau East, ripped off consecutive 14yard runs to get the Lumberjacks out of the shadow of their own goal post, then neither team got much going offensively for the rest of the half.

That changed on East’s first drive of the second half when two first downs got the Lumberjacks into Medford territory. On second and 13, Stahel bounced a run outside to the left, got through just enough of a hole on the edge and was gone on a 40-yard sprint down the sideline, opening up a 14-6 lead.

“He’s a really good back,” Wilson said. “He’s the best back I’ve seen in the conference so far, no doubt. He likes to bounce to the edge. If we don’t maintain a good solid edge presence, he’s going to bounce to the edge and gain a lot of yards and that’s what happened to us.”

Medford got a 47-yard kickoff return from Soczka to start its ensuing drive on East’s 49, but the Raiders got nothing on third and one and lost 2 yards on fourth down. The defense responded with a stop, but Medford did nothing on its next possession, turning the ball over on downs at its 47. A 14-yard run, a 30-yard completion from Rye to Meverden and a 3yard touchdown run by Stahel made it 206 with 2:17 left in the third quarter.

Soczka’s 34-yard kickoff return again gave Medford field position to work with near midfield and Elsner’s 17-yard run got the Raiders to East’s 39, but Meverden snared Nick Krause’s second-down pass over the middle and had nothing but green grass along the right sideline to put the nail in Medford’s coffin for the night.

“I think just not scoring on some of the drives was how it got away from us,” Wilson said. “You get down by a couple of scores and you start doing things that maybe you aren’t necessarily comfortable with. The ball goes into the air a little bit more and it just didn’t work out for us. They got a little momentum going and momentum can be a big thing.”

Another decent kick return, a 20-yarder from Cash Thums, put Medford at East’s 45 and the Raiders took that drive to East’s one, but a fourth-down pass there fell incomplete. Medford did get two points out of that, however, when Stahel slipped on a handoff and was tackled in the end zone for a safety.

East’s Gio Gomez closed the scoring by drilling a 36-yard field goal with six seconds left in the game.

Rye wound up completing six of 11 passes for 144 yards. He was intercepted late in the first half by Medford’s Caden Olson. It was a tough passing day for the Raiders, who did not complete a pass in 10 tries.

Despite the loss, Medford remains a game out of first place in the GNC thanks to Mosinee’s 21-14 win at Tomahawk Friday. Two of Medford’s last three games are against those two contenders, starting with Friday’s homecoming matchup with the Hatchets at Raider Field. Tomahawk was 5-0 overall before the Mosinee loss and, in its second year back in the GNC, has quickly established itself as a legitimate title contender.

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. “They have a lot of good athletes,” Wilson said. “They’re playing very physical this year. They’re a good football team. We’ll have our work cut out for us.”