WEEK 3 FOOTBALL - First Thursday game of the fall, conference play highlight week 3

Week three of the high school football season marks the full-time start of conference play for most teams and, in the case of two local teams, the chance to get into the win column for the first time. The Rib Lake Redmen will kick off the weekend’s action early with the first of their two straight Thursday games. Tonight, they head to Park Falls to face the Chequamegon Co-op at 7 p.m. Rib Lake is officially 0-2 overall and 0-1 in Northwoods East Conference play, thanks to a week-one forfeit to Hurley and this past Friday’s 49-0 loss at Gilman. With a game now under their belts, the Redmen hope to fix correctable mistakes and beat the Screaming Eagles for the second straight year. “Now we know where we really need to improve and we know where we’re OK,” Rib Lake head coach Austin Edwards said. “There were a few plays where we said, this is a good play. We can run this. Things that worked against them, if they can work against Gilman, they’re probably going to work against other teams, so we’re optimistic in that regard.” The Chequamegon team, which also includes Butternut and Mercer for one last year, is coming off a 50-0 blowout nonconference win at Winter-Birchwood Friday. The Eagles were blown out 52-8 by defending conference champion Phillips in week one. Chequamegon, under first-year head coach Michael Semon, a former co-head coach for Rib Lake-Prentice, ran for 339 yards and averaged 10.3 yards per carry in its week-two win, but it was held to just 60 yards and 2.1 yards per carry while giving up 377 yards of total offense against Phillips, including 351 on the ground. The Screaming Eagles have been a run-bycommittee team so far on offense. Senior Antonio Pearce has 76 yards rushing and 52 yards passing so far and senior Mason Paholke had 60 yards and two rushing touchdowns. “We expect a team that’s going to line up a lot in the shotgun,” Rib Lake head coach Austin Edwards said. “They’re another team that’s going to run some misdirection stuff. They’re not afraid to throw the ball. We think our personnel matches up a lot better with Chequamegon than it did with Gilman. But it will be another test of where we’re at.” The Medford Raiders hope to find new life after blowout losses to ranked teams Holmen and Onalaska in non-conference play. The Raiders open Great Northern Conference play at Antigo Friday at 7 p.m. Medford has owned the rivalry of late, winning the regular-season matchup the past seven years. Antigo comes into this one with some momentum. The Red Robins rebounded from a 21-14 loss at Northland Pines with a 54-6 rout of Sturgeon Bay in week two. Antigo has one of the youngest squads in the GNC and isn’t overly deep, but the Robins do have some size up front. Offensively, key playmakers early on have included senior quarterback Max Kneeland, senior running back Levi Binversie, junior back Randy Quevedo, who had a receiving and rushing touchdown in the loss to Pines. Medford head coach Ted Wilson said on film he sees an offense under veteran head coach Tom Schofield that is merging some old-style Antigo offense with the new. “They have some pistol-type sets they ran last year and the year before that,” Wilson said. “They’re still running some of that, but they’re running some of old stuff, straight-T stuff. I think Tom has gone to mixing it together. They running clocked Sturgeon Bay and had a real close game with Northland Pines that came down to the wire. They’re battled-tested. They’ve won a game. “We kind of have our work cut out for us. We’re dinged up quite a bit. We have a couple kids sick now, so we’re just trying to make it through.” The Gilman Pirates end a seasonopening three-game homestand with a North Central Conference crossover game with Frederic Friday at 7 p.m. The Vikings are 1-1, having lost 27-25 to Clayton in their opener. They beat Northwood-Solon Springs 61-8. The Vikings let an opportunity to win the Clayton get away, fumbling on two plays in a row at the 1and 2-yard line in the final moments. Gilman won last year’s matchup 43-0, but this is a team the Pirates’ coaching staff has had its eyes on in the off-season. The teams also got a feel for each other three weeks ago, meeting at the Cornell scrimmages. Senior Leif Lahti leads the Vikings with 165 yards and four touchdowns through two weeks, but junior quarterback Royce Anderson has directed a pretty potent passing attack with 269 yards while completing 13 of 21 of his throws in two games. Riley Cummings has eight receptions to lead the team. He’s caught three touchdown passes. Gilman, conversely, has shut out its first two opponents. “Defensively we’ve been pretty sound against two teams that want to run the ball,” Gilman head coach Robin Rosemeyer said. “This week, we’ll be tested a little bit more with the pass by Frederic. We scrimmaged them so we have an idea of what they do. They’ve had some successful passing plays the past few weeks. Their run game hasn’t been as good as their passing game. “They have the best defensive line we’ve seen so far. It’s a four-front, they’ll be aggressive out of their four-front. They’re going to have some size and speed, so we’ll have to be able to block that.”