MEDFORD 46, ANTIGO 12 - Defense gets it done, offense runs by Red Robins

MEDFORD 46, ANTIGO 12

The Medford Raiders showed their explosive side, averaging more than 10 yards per play on just 30 offensive snaps in a 46-12 rout of Antigo Friday in their first Great Northern Conference football game of the season.

Just as impressive as the big offensive plays, however, was the ability of the shorthanded defense to limit Antigo to just six points over the first three quarters.

Early-season injuries, particularly to the week-one linebacker duo of Gage Losiewicz and Tucyr Smola, forced Medford to work some new faces into the rotation and move others around. But after some early hiccups Friday against a team that came to Raider Field with a nothing-to-lose attitude, the defensive unit settled in and even scored a touchdown of its own as the Raiders built a commanding 38-6 halftime lead.

“We kinda planned for it all week,” Medford head coach Ted Wilson said. “(Assistant) Ross Hackbarth and I sat down and talked about where we thought we could get kids on the field. It’s all about trying to get your 11 best players on the field. We have kids who are willing to play positions they haven’t played much before. We were just trying to get kids in where we can get them to make some plays and help us out. Overall, with kids playing in different spots they did a pretty good job.”

Among those getting more time on the defensive line were senior Ben Gruber, junior Sawyer Elsner and sophomore Carson Ingersoll, while Zach Gosse was at linebacker for the second straight week and Charlie Gierl, who was playing end, slid back to linebacker as well.

“We filled in guys and it worked well tonight,” Gierl said. “We all did our jobs and got the win.”

Gierl had the game’s biggest defensive play. With Medford leading 16-6, Antigo drove into Raider territory after recovering a fumble and faced a fourth and five at the 30.

Gierl snatched Colton Thomae’s pass over the middle and sprinted 70 yards the other way for a touchdown that made it 22-6 with 7:48 left in the half. Medford scored twice more after that to extend the lead to 32 by the half and Paxton Rothmeier got loose for a 71-yard touchdown run, his fourth score of the night, on the first play of the second half to seal the deal.

“Coach told me to sit on the screen, so I was just sitting inside and he must not have seen me,” Gierl said. “He threw it straight to me.”

“Absolutely a great play by Charlie,” Wilson said. “He was kinda hanging in the middle there. Their kid threw a low ball, it wasn’t a screen or anything. He just threw a low ball, he jumped up and caught it and finished the run. It was a heck of a run. That really kind of shifted the momentum for us, helped us go on a little bit of a run there and score three times in the second quarter.”

Rothmeier ran for 207 yards on just 11 carries for an average of 18.8 yards per attempt. That accounted for a big chunk of Medford’s 311 total yards, all of which came in the running game. Antigo’s size was a concern coming into the game, but the Red Robins were no match for Medford’s speed in the open field.

“We changed some formations a little bit,” Wilson said. “We thought maybe we could get to the edge a little bit on them. For the plays that we had, which I think was only about 30 offensive plays, we executed pretty well. We never punted, we had a lot of short fields and a lot of explosive plays.”

A bad snap on a punt resulted in a 16-yard loss to end Antigo’s first possession. Medford overcame a penalty to complete a 36-yard scoring drive with Rothmeier’s 12-yard run. His two-point conversion made it 8-0.

Antigo answered, keyed by a 48-yard completion from Ethan Buchman to Ayden Kaiser on a double-reverse pass, to score on Thomae’s 15-yard pass over the middle to Kaiser that made it 8-6 with 2:15 left in the first quarter. Buchman completed another pass on a reverse to Thomae later in the half for 22 yards, but other than that, the Robins didn’t get much more accomplished.

“We just stuck in it,” senior defensive end Alex Faude said. “We had to really read what was going on, figure out what was going on. We watched their film. The scout did pretty good at running their plays in practice.”

Gierl ran for 28 yards and Rothmeier ran for 20 to set up Rothmeier’s 4-yard touchdown run with 33 seconds left in the first quarter. After Gierl’s pick-six, Medford forced a punt and needed to go just 48 yards for its fourth touchdown on the night. It came on a 5-yard run by Evan Czarnezki. Rothmeier’s 35-yard punt return set up his 27-yard score with 4:49 left in the half.

Three games into the season, Wilson said Medford’s relatively-young offensive line is progressing, putting in the work in practice and in Sunday film sessions.

“They are getting better,” he said. “They do a good job of taking coaching and listening to the coaching. But you have to see it on film. You have to see this is how it looks when you do things right and it looks like this when you do it wrong. While we have some film on the sidelines during games and that helps, it also helps for them to sit down and reassess and get shown what we have to do to be successful and how it has to look.”

Now 2-1 overall, Medford concludes a three-game early-season homestand this Friday against Merrill (2-1), a team that Medford struggled to beat 12-0 last year and, after working with a lot of youth last year, is –– as expected –– playing like a more experienced team this year.

“We’re still learning,” Wilson said. “I think we’re going to keep growing. I think we’re going to be better this week than we were last week. I just hope that keeps happening going forward. We’re still pretty young.”

Blocker Owen Klussendorf picks off Antigo’s Gordon Lucht, springing Charlie Gierl free for a 28-yard gain during the first quarter of Medford’s 46-12 win over Antigo Friday. MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS