NEXT ONES UP

Steady improvement needed to stay on top

The Medford Raiders enter the 2021 football season holding the title of twotime defending Great Northern Conference champion, but the vast majority of players responsible for those titles have moved on.

That means it’s time for the next wave of Raiders to step in, learn, improve and see how far that can take them.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but there is the belief in Medford’s camp that the talent is there to build something strong and make another run.

“I told the kids (Sunday) night we have a lot of potential,” 16th-year head coach Ted Wilson said Monday. “We really do. There’s some potential there. We have some nice players. We just need to work our way toward finding where that potential is going to take us. You can say you have potential but if you don’t work on trying to get better or work to increase your skill or work to even get physically better, it will be unrealized potential. We as coaches need to try to draw that out.”

Medford’s inexperienced crew had some good moments, but also took some lumps Friday in scrimmage sessions with Menomonie, Eau Claire Regis and Edgar, which Medford’s coaching staff has rarely viewed as a bad thing as good competition to start the year exposes areas that need work. Friday’s season opener at Rice Lake and the Aug. 27 home opener against Amherst will do the same ahead of the week-three Great Northern Conference opener against Ashland at Raider Field.

“It’s going to be a different year from the past because we’ve always had these huge senior classes,” said one of the few returning pieces from last year, the GNC’s 2020 Offensive Player of the Year Aiden Gardner. “Our class only has nine kids. We’re going to need a lot of the juniors and maybe even some of the sophomores to help out.”

The inexperience is particularly present on two areas traditionally viewed as Medford’s strengths –– defense and the offensive line. Defensively, senior linebacker Caleb Guden and junior tackle Tukker Schreiner are the only two players who filled weekly starting roles by season’s end in 2020. The only returning starter on the offensive line is junior tackle Bryce Sperl.

Offensively, the Raiders do have two huge pieces returning from last year’s 6-2 team that went 6-0 in the GNC with Gardner at running back and junior Logan Baumgartner at quarterback. Gardner ran for 995 yards and 11 touchdowns in a shortened season, while Baumgartner completed 54% of his 74 passes for 531 yards and six touchdowns with just two interceptions.

Schreiner only had nine carries for 49 yards, but by the end of 2020 he was getting a lot of snaps at fullback and that’s where he starts this year.

From there, the Raiders will be looking for contributions from a lot of new faces.

On the offensive line, senior center Jake Seifert and guard Kolton Ratcliff have the inside track on openingnight starts, while juniors Will Haavisto and Alex Kraegenbrink fill the other two spots.

“We’ve only got one returner there,” Wilson said. “That’s a steep learning curve for offensive linemen. But they’re all good hard workers. I think we’ll be able to make some hay.”

“Bryce played a lot last year, and we have two senior linemen there, the rest are all juniors,” Seifert said. “Those underclassand men, the juniors, are all putting their work in on the line. It’s tough but they have size to them.”

Senior Brigham Kelley and Colby Elsner and junior Charlie Kleist add blocking and receiving ability at tight end. Seniors Seth Mudgett and Trevor Woebbeking each caught a couple of passes during Friday’s scrimmages from wide receiver positions and Guden will be what Wilson called Medford’s Swiss Army knife, getting action out wide, at a wing or in the backfield. Juniors Tucker Kraemer and Peyton Gilles shared carries with Gardner in the scrimmages. Senior Parker Crass adds depth in the backfield.

“Aiden returning is big,” Seifert said. It’s nice to have a returning quarterback. Obviously, quarterbacks are important. Logan is confident with the ball. He’s more confident than he was last year.” Gardner agreed. “Having Logan as a three-year quarterback and with him knowing and getting more familiar and comfortable with the offense is big,” he said. “You can tell he’s getting more comfortable because he’ll throw passes 30 yards down the field and they’ll be right on the money.” You could also call coach Ross Hackbarth a new face on offense as Wilson has turned the play calling over to the nearly 20-year assistant on the staff who will be able to stay with the varsity fulltime with the addition of new assistant Joey Leonard.

“I’m still the head coach, so we’re still going to run what we run,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s still my program. But we were able to add Joey Leonard at the lower levels, and I thought maybe this was a good opportunity to give Ross some varsity playcalling experience for his future and whatever happens to the future of Medford football because I’m obviously not going to be there forever. I’m not saying that I’m leaving or anything. It’s just that I’m not going to be there forever.”

While Medford led the Great Northern Conference last fall by averaging 34 points and 391 yards per game, the Raiders were also a defensive force, allowing six points and just 165 yards per game in league play. Getting back to that level won’t be easy, especially not right away, but how that unit improves week by week will be one of the season’s most intriguing storylines.

“We’re super young,” Wilson said. “We have Tukker back on the defensive line and Chubs and that’s it. Everybody else is a brand new body. We’ll have some growing pains and we had some growing pains against Regis (in the scrimmage). There’s keys our defense and you really have to watch your keys and the simple rules that we give. We truly believe in trying to keep it simple so that kids can react and go. We’re not following them yet. It’s easy to let your eyes wander and watch other things, but you just can’t do that. We’ll take the bad right now from the scrimmage and turn them into good and try to make them right.”

Up front, Schreiner, Sperl and Ratcliff figure to take a lot of snaps. Don’t be surprised if sophomores like Braxton Weissmiller and Max Dietzman get some snaps as well. Kelley, Elsner and even Baumgartner are slated to play at defensive end.

The Raiders appear to have two solid, aggressive linebackers in Guden and Seifert and they’re high on the potential for the secondary, which includes Mudgett, Woebbeking, Gardner, Kraemer and Kleist.

Once conference play begins, the Raiders expect to be challenged each every week. On paper, there doesn’t appear to be a clear-cut GNC favorite. Last year’s runner-up, Rhinelander, has gotten some pre-season press, while Mosinee is always in the mix. Lakeland did well against Rhinelander in a scrimmage session Friday, for what it’s worth, and Merrill and Antigo have historically competed well in the conference, though both struggled mightily last year.

Hayward has a new coach this year in Noah LeBlanc and is a bit of an unknown entering its second GNC season. Ashland might be a team flying under the radar but has the attention of Wilson, especially after a close 26-11 battle with the Raiders last October.

“Anybody can be beaten,” Wilson said. “Everybody is vulnerable. Everybody has strengths. Everybody has weaknesses.”

The senior class may be small but it has a history of knowing how to win and the players see no reason why, despite the inexperience, they can’t remain GNC contenders.

“If we can be three-year conference champions, it will be the first time someone has done it outright (in the GNC), so that would be cool,” Seifert said.

“We want to keep this conference and playoff streak alive,” Gardner said.

“It’s a mantra, but this year it’s very true,” Wilson said. “We have to really work to get better every day.”