Tonight is first test for changes team has made

MEDFORD GIRLS HOOPS PREVIEW

The Medford Raiders tip off the 2022-23 girls basketball season tonight, Thursday, with a new-look coaching staff, a mostlynew varsity roster and new-look philosophies on both ends of the floor.

They’ll also welcome a team leader back to game action as the new era of Raider basketball begins under head coach Chad Fronk.

An assistant under Medford’s three previous head coaches, Fronk now gets his shot to steer the program in a new direction. This year’s staff includes varsity assistant Keith Wicks, Fronk’s Medford Class of 1990 teammate and, most recently, the girls varsity coach at Thorp, and JV coach Brian Abel, who returns from last year’s staff.

They’re bringing lots of changes to the girls, which everyone is fully aware may result in some tough times early. But there is optimistic hope the changes will lead to brighter days down the road.

“I want the kids to play hard,” Fronk said Tuesday. “I think they’ve responded to the coaching staff pretty well so far. They try. They’re doing good. I do think we can compete. We’ll see what happens when we get into the meat of the schedule.”

Game one on that schedule is at Raider Hall tonight against the Hayward Hurricanes, a team that beat Medford 42-39 in the teams’ first meeting in recent memory last January. Game two is Tuesday, also at home, against Merrill, a team Medford beat twice during last year’s 8-16 campaign that included a 6-6 mark in the Great Northern Conference.

The varsity roster is filled with inexperience, but there are a handful of returners the Raiders will count on to keep things steadily moving in the right direction. Seniors Bryn Fronk and Brooke Rudolph top the list. A third senior, guard Hope Faude, is out due to a summer ACL injury, though the coaches haven’t yet closed the door on her returning at some point.

“They’re our leaders,” Chad Fronk said.

Bryn Fronk’s return from an ACL injury is a highlight to the start of the season. A second-team All-GNC pick last year despite missing half the season, Fronk went down last Jan. 14 in a loss to D.C. Everest. She worked her way back to basketball strength in time to take part in the first week of practice and Friday’s scrimmage sessions in Merrill. She was averaging 6.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.5 steals and 1.3 assists at the time of the injury last year.

Rudolph steadily improved in her first varsity season last year and gave Medford some solid post play, averaging 5.5 points and 3.8 rebounds per game. Junior Breanna Kraemer is back after also giving the Raiders quality minutes in the second half of last season in the paint and averaging 2.7 points and 4.4 rebounds per game. From there, the experience level drops off. Juniors Rachel Wesle and Masaeda Krug and sophomore Toryn Rau got a few minutes here and there late in varsity games. Fronk noted that Rau was a player who took a noticeable jump in the off-season.

The rest of the varsity roster is all new with juniors Madison Clarkson, Ella Daniels and Bailey Eloranta and freshmen Aliyah Pilgrim and Rylee Hraby.

The focus in the summer and in the first week of practice, according to Fronk, was defense. The vision for the coaches is for Medford to turn into a high-effort, man-to-man based defensive squad and use that as the foundation for this year’s team while the offense works out the expected early bumps in the road.

“We haven’t been a man-to-man defensive team for a few years. We’re going to change that,” Fronk said. “We’re going to play a lot of manto- man. They’re learning how to get through screens and that there needs to be more communication. It’s a different ball game from playing zone. I’m not saying we’re never going to play zone. But they’re coming along with the defense.”

The offensive philosophy is slowly but surely taking hold. Fronk said the coaches saw some glimpses Friday as Medford scrimmaged teams like Wausau West, Stratford and Newman Catholic. While it will be interesting to see where the scoring and shooting will come from as the season unfolds, cutting down on the 23 turnovers per game Medford averaged last year would certainly help the offensive efficiency.

“We want to spread the floor,” Fronk said. “We want to create good ball movement, snapping passes. We don’t want a lot of dribbling. We want to have that motion offense where we’re passing more than we’re dribbling. I believe the offense is for guards and post players alike. I think we can get good shots from our guards and we can also have good post play out of this offense because I think we’re going to get good looks underneath with Breanna and Brooke.

“The kids, I think, are catching on to the new offense,” he added. “We were giving them bits and pieces. We started slow and we’re working our way through everything. We’re getting into more of the meat of the offense. It’s a work in progress.”

While the X’s and O’s are certainly important, the coaches are also looking to instill one more big idea into Medford’s program philosophy. While hard work is always part of the plan, their hope is to make playing the game fun for the girls as well.

“I want the girls to have a positive experience with basketball,” Fronk said. “I want them to have fun. I told them I’m going to encourage you guys to ride the buses on the way home because that’s where your memories are made with your friends. Bring the speaker, play the music, have a good time.” Unfortunately, the program is caught in a bit of a numbers crunch this year. The Raiders start the year with 24 girls, which put them in the quandary of whether to go with two or three teams. The decision was to stick with two, though some additional JV2 games will be scheduled to provide more playing time. “My philosophy was if you can’t play as hard as you can while you’re in the game and give a full 100% effort for the time you’re in there, then I’m not exactly sure we should be doing that,” Fronk said. “I saw it in previous years where you have six kids trying to play a game. You can’t do it. I don’t care how good of shape you’re in, you just can’t do it.” The 2022-23 schedule will provide its fair share of challenges. In the conference, Lakeland, a sectional finalist last year, figures to be loaded with highly-regarded sisters Julianna and Kristina Ouimette leading the way. Mosinee lost a lot, but still figures to have enough talent to contend and Rhinelander is always solid under head coach Ryan Clark. The Raiders swept Antigo, Northland Pines and Tomahawk last year to record their six wins. The non-conference slate features quality programs like Menomonie, last year’s sectional champion, Rice Lake, Chippewa Falls, Onalaska and La Crosse Central. It won’t be easy, but as Fronk sees it, there are no shortcuts to building a program and playing tough competition is part of that process.

“Like I told everybody else, I plan to try to build a program,” Fronk said. “I don’t want to say never, but I can see myself doing this for awhile. I like working with the kids. I want to get them going. We have a lot of fundamentals and things to work on, but we’ll keep plugging away.”