ties. There was just no ….

ties. There was just no end result to the hard work. That’s what’s irritating and frustrating. Sometimes through games like that, we learn a lot. We learn a lot from losing I tell the boys and this could be a good early-season loss for us to get back on track and focus on beating every team we play from here on out.”

The Raiders possessed the ball well early on and created the multiple aforementioned scoring chances in the second half. But in between, bridging the end of the first half and the start of the second half, the Hodags started winning more 50-50 balls and gaining more possession time. Their efforts paid off when Petrick buried his go-ahead shot from the right side of Rhinelander’s formation.

Medford, on the other hand, never got that big shot to get back to even.

“(Ostermann) is a great goalie,” Bilodeau said. “He plays really high, so sometimes on those through balls that we get through the defense the keeper just acts as a sweeper and clears them out. You have to be cautious of those things, but with keepers that play high they’re leaving the goal open in the back, so you can’t be afraid to shoot from further out and take advantage of that.”

The Raiders are expecting another high-intensity match tonight, Thursday, when Lakeland comes to Raider Field for a 7 p.m. kickoff. After opening the season with a 3-3 tie against Three Lakes-Phelps, the T-Birds have ripped off four straight wins including a 9-0 whitewash of Antigo Tuesday. Another solid GNC opponent, Mosinee, visits on Sept. 9.

Bilodeau’s message to the team after Tuesday’s loss was to get back to more team-oriented play and get back to work as he believes one loss won’t take anyone out of GNC title contention.

“How we respond to this and how we react to this situation is going to dictate how the rest of this season goes,” he said. “We can dwell on this loss and hang our heads and just not make any progress or we can pick ourselves up and move on to every game and make sure we win every game we play from here on out and take every game seriously.”

1-1 on Saturday

Medford dominated New London 7-1 Saturday in the first round of a triangular at Raider Field and fell 5-1 to a rocksolid Wisconsin Rapids squad in the final game of the afternoon. In between, Rapids shut out New London.

Kale Klussendorf had a hat trick and Tlusty scored twice to lead the offensive charge against the Bulldogs, a team from the Bay Conference that Medford could see again in WIAA Division 3 post-season play.

“That was a great sectional matchup for us,” Bilodeau said. “We want to play teams like that so that we can show our worth, so to speak, and get a higher seed at the end of the season.”

It took the Raiders a while to get going but finally, 24 minutes in, Klussendorf broke the ice with the first of his three goals. From there, the Raiders didn’t stop, building a 4-0 halftime lead and then scoring three more after the Bulldogs got their lone tally early in the second half.

“You want to set the tone for the match right away, come out swinging and get one in the first 10-15 minutes,” Bilodeau said. “It was one of those games where it just took us time to figure out what we were going to do, then we put the ball in the back of the net and it was like, ‘OK, now we know how to score.’ Then they just kept coming.”

Klussendorf struck again in the 27th minute and Silas Wipf and Tlusty found the back of the net in the 34th and 35th minutes of the 40-minute half to open up the commanding four-goal lead.

New London scored in the 49th minute on a floater that goal keeper Jake Dassow just misjudged.

The Raiders shook that off, getting goals from Gage Neubauer in the 58th minute, Tlusty in the 61st minute and Klussendorf in the 64th minute. The hat trick was Klussendorf’s first.

“We outpossessed them,” Bilodeau said. “We’re trying to focus on being a possessive team. We did just that. Once we scored it seemed like every three, four or five minutes we scored another one.”

Wisconsin Rapids took control of what wound up being the day’s championship game by scoring four times in the opening half. Tlusty scored an unassisted goal in the second half, but that wasn’t nearly enough to challenge Rapids in the final 40 minutes.

“Rapids is a Division 1 school and they’re a really good Division 1 school,” Bilodeau said. “We use these games as learning opportunities. We can learn a lot from losing. I think the boys did learn a lot from that. That was probably one of the better teams we’ve ever played. They were really disciplined, really wellcoached.”

Injuries and absences left Medford a little short on depth by the end of a hot late August afternoon, but Bilodeau said he was happy with how the Raiders finished.

“I told them at halftime, the score can be 10-0 right now, but how we respond to being down means more to me than what the score is. Are we getting on each other for mistakes, are we chewing each other out with the errors that we make or are we trying to bring each other up, be positive and make the situation the best it can be? They did. The second half was much better. They scored one on us and we ended up getting a goal. We cleaned it up, buttoned it up.

“It was good for the guys to see that level of soccer. They all said at the end of the match, we learned something from this.”

Medford 3, Xavier 1

Three different players scored goals and the Raiders came within five minutes of a second straight shutout to start the season in a 3-1 road win at Appleton Xavier Thursday evening.

It was Medford’s first win of the year and came two days after the Raiders played to a 0-0 tie at Baldwin-Woodville in their opener.

“It’s always good to win on the road and even better to win against a team you know nothing about,” Bilodeau said. “Xavier’s always had a good program and they were good. We played really well. We dominated. We possessed the ball very well.”

Zach Rudolph finally put Medford on the board for the first time this fall with an unassisted goal in the first half.

“We threw the ball in and Zach won the ball in the middle of the field and just kind of dribbled from the left side through the middle all the way to right side and shot it, right on the edge of the 18 area,” Bilodeau said. “It was a great shot.”

Neubauer and Tlusty traded goals and assists in the second half. Neubauer got the first one, scoring on a one-touch shot

MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS