New-look Raiders get their new head coach

MEDFORD BOYS SOCCER

BY MATT FREY SPORTS EDITOR

The vacancy was there longer than hoped, but Medford’s athletic department hopes the wait was worth it to find its new boys soccer head coach.

That man is Adam Derr, an Oshkosh native who returned to Wisconsin about a year ago after several years on the East Coast. A lifelong soccer enthusiast, Derr takes over a program that is still relatively new but is coming off its most successful stretch under the direction of Nathan Bilodeau the past four seasons.

Bilodeau resigned after the Raiders won the Great Northern Conference championship last fall with a 7-1-2 league record. The team went 13-2-4 overall, falling in a sectional semifinal penalty kick shootout to eventual state qualifier Rhinelander.

Practices for this fall are set to start on Monday, Aug. 14.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Derr said just before Monday’s annual fall sports meeting at MASH, where he was to have his first full meeting with players and parents involved in the program. “I’ve been in Medford now for about a year. My wife (Jennifer Hale) and I moved here to be near family. I just started playing basketball in the morning with a group of guys. Just talking to those guys — and I’ve always played or coached or reffed soccer — they kept saying, ‘we don’t have a coach.’ And I was like, oh I’d be interested in helping out.’

“Then a little while later, it was, ‘well we still don’t have a coach,”’ Derr added. “Well I can’t let them go without a coach, so I thought, ‘all right I’ll do it.’ I’m excited to do it. Not knowing a lot of people, it’s a little intimidating at first. But there’s such a great history with the team, even though it’s a short history, it seems like there’s a good history of soccer in Medford. I’m hoping to just kind of build on that.”

Now the third head coach in program history following Bilodeau and Dan Felix, Derr is a 1998 Oshkosh West graduate and earned a degree in bacteriology from UW-Madison. He and his wife live in the Town of Hill, just north of the Taylor/Price county line. Derr works in regulatory affairs for the Food and Drug Administration in the approvals of animal drugs.

“I played pick-up soccer and club stuff, indoor, whatever I could come up with (at Madison),” Derr said. “Then I moved out east for work and school. I kinda bounced around a couple of different places, coached in Rochester, N.Y., I coached in Maryland and played out there as well.

“I’ve also taken some coaching courses, so I’m not coming into this blind,” he said. “I’ve done everything from coaching little

See DERR on page 4

Adam Derr kids at day care for 45-minute sessions where they just run around and kick a ball to coaching both boys and girls club high school-aged teams. I haven’t coached a high school team, but I’ve got a lot of experience coaching different club teams.”

Derr said he’s also jumped into situations where programs were frantically searching for coaches, so what he’s doing now isn’t unfamiliar territory either. JV coach Tanya Tessmann is returning and will be an important part of the transition.

“It’s difficult but we’re going to make the best of it,” he said.

Derr said he did meet some of the players at a recent captain’s practice and is familiar with the program’s current status. A dozen players graduated after last year’s success, leaving only a handful of players who got significant varsity minutes.

While Derr expects inexperience to be something the team will have to overcome early, it’s certainly not something that can’t be overcome.

“There is going to be a lot of growth because not many of these guys have played varsity, so they’re going to get a lot of chances,” Derr said. “I don’t want to say those were chances that they didn’t get (last year). The team before them was so good and I think the coach before, from everything I’ve heard, did a good job giving everybody an opportunity. But with that senior class with 10 starters there were a lot of guys, who in other places, might’ve been playing varsity but they spent all season last year playing JV. It’s a big step up, but I think they have a lot of opportunity to grow and get better. I’m hoping to see that.”

Derr said he has two key expectations of the players in the program.

“The thing I’m going to tell them (Monday) is that I’m looking for two things –– purpose and responsibility,” he said. “You play with a purpose. Everything you do should be for a reason. You’re not just going out there kicking a ball. The responsibility includes hard work, showing up to practice, being there for your teammates, even down to making sure you have your equipment.

“When you get to high school, you start getting to the point where those two things really start forming your future,” he continued. “You start taking classes that you think are going to get you to where you want to be in a career or college. You have to start showing up to classes especially if you want to be on the team, you have to do your school work.”

Medford’s first game is fast approaching. The Raiders will be at New London on Aug. 24 before a big GNC opener at Rhinelander on Aug. 29. The home opener is Aug. 31 against Northland Pines.

“I’ve always played,” Derr said. “I love playing. I love coaching.”