Goals still tough to get, but soccer team does beat Mosinee

MEDFORD GIRLS SOCCER

For the second time this season, Medford’s young girls soccer team hung with the current leaders in the Great Northern Conference Tuesday night.

But for the second time, the Lakeland Thunderbirds were able to do to the Raiders what they’ve done to most teams they’ve played, keeping the ball out of their net and getting that go-ahead goal when needed in a 1-0 win at Raider Field.

Maria Gironella got the goal at 55:29, taking advantage of one of the few mistakes Medford made defensively, picking up an errant back pass by the Raiders and quickly squaring up and firing a 21yard shot that got over Medford keeper Sophia Brunner and under the crossbar.

That was all Lakeland needed to improve to 8-0 in the GNC and 12-1 overall. The T-Birds can clinch the outright GNC title by winning at 7-1 Rhinelander on Friday.

Medford is 3-5 in the GNC and will try to emerge from a three-way tie with Northland Pines and Mosinee by beating Antigo today, Thursday, and Northland Pines Tuesday in its last two GNC road games of the season. The Raiders are 4-12 overall.

“I am happy with the way we played because last time we played them we lost 2-0 and we held them to one this time,” junior co-captain Nikki Poetzl said after the loss. “At halftime we were feeling pretty good. Then the second half where they hit us. But we ended on a really good note. I’m happy with the way we ended.”

Poetzl referred to a couple of runs the Raiders were able to make in the last three minutes to finally put some pressure on Lakeland’s defense, which had been virtually air-tight in the half up to that point. T-Bird defender Charley Cleveland got in the way of a run with two minutes left. Megan Schaefer’s long shot with 1:15 left forced goalie Ava Evenhouse to make a play on the ball. Mallory Richter got off one last shot with five seconds left that was directed out of bounds and time ran out.

“We did good to hold them obviously, they only had one goal, but we can’t win games without scoring,” head coach Tanya Tessmann said. “We have to get that going. It would’ve been nice to go to a shootout and get a conference point that way, but we need to score during the game if we want to do anything.”

Medford has just five goals in eight GNC games and 12 goals overall. That lack of scoring can magnify any defensive breakdown in a tight game.

“There was a lot of back and forth going on in the goal area,” Tessmann said of Lakeland’s goal. “We just needed more urgency to get it out and clear it. You have to clear it out of there completely. With that shot we had no one right there to pressure.”

Medford beat Antigo 2-0 and Pines 1-0 in its first meetings with those teams. Repeat wins would likely give the Raiders the upper-division in the GNC they were shooting for to start the year.

“Our focus right now is conference,” Tessmann said. “It’s Antigo and then Northland Pines and we’ll see what happens. One game at a time. Antigo first. Nothing is a given in this conference. We are closer to teams than last year.”

Both of those games start at 5 p.m. The Raiders will close the regular season with a 4:30 p.m. non-conference game against a good Ashland team May 25 at Raider Field.

Rice Lake 6, Medford 0

The Raiders were a bit overmatched on Saturday, but they took some positives from knowing they had an improved showing over last year in a 6-0 non-conference loss at Rice Lake.

“Last year, I looked back and saw they took 71 shots against us,” Tessmann said of an 8-0 loss at Raider Field last April. “We set some goals on how many shots we wanted them to get and trying to limit them and we met those goals.”

The shots were cut almost in half, down to 37 according to Medford’s stat book. Of those, Brunner had 22 saves.

“The girls played a decent game,” Tessmann said. “A lot of the goals were just close, hard shots. When they’re close like that, it makes them that much harder to stop, especially when they have some power behind it. Some of them went off our hands.”

Rice Lake’s first goal came just 3:44 and came off the foot of Julia Holthaus, who wound up with a hat trick. Medford responded with its best scoring chance of the afternoon just seconds later. A throwin by Holly Grube and passing by Sierra Tessmann and Richter pushed the ball up the field into Rice Lake territory and Richter’s centering pass was grabbed by goalie Ayla Zuzek just before Medford’s Valeria Polendo Soto got to it.

Kallahan Bowman put Rice Lake up 2-0 at 12:42 by sneaking a shot just under the diving Brunner. A good, hard shot by Addle Leaf in the 26th minutes was deflected but not well enough, making it 3-0. Bowman had the assist. With a minute to go in the half, Rice Lake scored again, this time getting a header Holthaus off a corner kick that the Raiders deflected but couldn’t keep out of the net.

Bowman got her second goal at 45:50 with a shot to the upper left corner and Holthaus scored off a Bowman assist at 54:29.

“Megan Schaefer got off a few shots and Sierra Tessmann had one,” coach Tessmann said. “Sierra was strong in the middle with her passing and dribbling and using her touches to get past players.”

Rice Lake improved to 5-6-1 at the time with the win.

Medford 1, Mosinee 0

Medford got a big one Thursday night in its quest for an upper-half placement in the conference by shutting out Mosinee 1-0 on the Indians’ home field to earn a split in the season series. Just one week earlier, Mosinee had knocked off Medford 3-1 at Raider Field.

This time, the only goal came 14:26 in. Medford had a throw-in on Mosinee’s end of the field and Alexis Szydel’s throw found Schaefer, who took a hard shot that glanced off the fingertips of Mosinee goalie Morgan Hoernke, over her back and over the goal line.

From there, the Raiders’ best chances to add on came late in the second half. In the 45th minute, Tessmann’s hard leftfooted shot that was saved. In the 60th minute, Richter took a pass from Tessmann, who had stolen the ball in the midfield area, and took a shot that was deflected just over the crossbar. The Raiders also got a good shot on Hoernke in the 68th minute that didn’t find its way through.

Medford dodged a couple of close ones too. Kaitlyn Selle, who scored twice in Mosinee’s win the previous week, booted one that just grazed over the crossbar five minutes into the game. The Indians got one past Brunner two minutes into the second half, but the officials waved it off, instead catching Mosinee offside. A free kick banged off the crossbar with three minutes left in the game, making everyone in red and white breathe a sigh of relief.

“The score was 1-0 at halftime, but we talked about coming out in the second half more aggressive and we definitely were,” Tanya Tessmann said.

That aggression paid off in the late shots, though Mosinee still finished with an 18-13 edge in shots. Brunner had nine saves for Medford on shots that were actually on goal. Medford put seven shots on Hoernke.

Tessmann was freed up for six shots, Schaefer took four and Madison Clarkson, Richter and Szydel got shots as well.

The game was the first one this season Medford played on a grass surface, which coach Tessmann said took some adjusting to. The upcoming games at Antigo and Pines also will be on grass.

“With warmer weather and being our first game on grass, we were slipping and sliding a little in the first half,” she said. “The ball was definitely moving slower.”

The key adjustment to make with the grass surface was following the ball all the way through its movements along the boundaries because it would often stop in play where, on turf, it likely would’ve skidded out of bounds.

“With the warmer weather it was good to have our deep bench to be able to make quick substitutions during the game and keep our starters fresh,” coach Tessmann said.