Raiders have no trouble with the Oredockers; Hayward is next

MEDFORD 59, ASHLAND 6

The Medford Raiders scored early and often and were able to spread the wealth on their eight touchdowns Friday in a low-stress 59-6 win at Ashland.

Even the few negatives the Raiders had turned into positives when Medford built a 40-0 halftime lead and kept Ashland winless on the season. The Raiders improved to 3-0 in the Great Northern Conference and 4-1 overall while moving past the midway point of the regular season.

Friday’s meeting was the last conference matchup between Medford and Ashland for the foreseeable future, just as this week’s game with Hayward will be as the Oredockers and Hurricanes move to the Heart O’ North football conference next fall as part of the WIAA’s latest round of football realignment.

Offensively, Medford scored touchdowns on its first four possessions, Defensively the Raiders limited Ashland to three first downs and, really, one big play in the first half.

“When you play teams that you’re better than, it’s good to go get things taken care of right away and put the game out of the ball park so that you can get some other kids in,” Medford head coach Ted Wilson said.

The defense forced a three-and-out to start the game. After the Oredocker punt, the Raiders went 66 yards in nine plays to get on the board. A 26-yard swing pass from Parker Lissner to Paxton Rothmeier was the big play on the drive. Rothmeier’s 12-yard touchdown run was nullified by a penalty but, on the next play, quarterback Hank Crass found Evan Wilkins wide open near the goal line and hit him for a 21-yard touchdown that made it 8-0 with 6:45 left in the first quarter.

A fumbled punt snap resulted in an 8-yard tackle for loss for Cameron Bull and gave Medford the ball at the Oredockers’ 32. Two plays later, Rothmeier scored on a 26-yard run.

Ashland got a first down by penalty on its next possession, then Carter Vuorenmaa appeared to be on his way to a 50yard touchdown run, but Wilkins caught him from behind, knocked the ball loose and Carson Carbaugh recovered at the nine.

“That one play, actually it was good because we can learn from it,” Wilson said. “We had a bunch of guys filling over the top that aren’t supposed to be so it was good for them to see how they’re supposed to actually flow when they’re coming from the backside and looking for that cutback.

“Evan Wilkins made a heck of a play on it to chase the kid down and then punch the ball out,” Wilson added. “What looked like a touchdown for them turned into a play for us to stop them from getting into the end zone. It was a good effort by him to chase it down and a good effort by our kids to, and we preach this, rally around the ball. If we don’t have kids following along and trying to rally to the tackle, we might not even get the fumble because they had a kid right there also that wasn’t that far behind.”

Wilkins made it an even bigger swing when, three plays later, he burst through a big hole opened by Tripp Reamer, Max Dietzman and Braxton Weissmiller, got the edge on the right side and outran Ashland’s defense for a 77-yard touchdown that made it 24-0 with 31 seconds left in the quarter.

“It was blocked really well by our kids and then Evan got the opportunity to make one guy miss and finish the run and he did that,” Wilson said. “It was a pretty good play all-around by the whole offense.”

A 51-yard drive to start the second quarter ended with Rothmeier’s 3-yard touchdown run and a 32-0 lead. Carbaugh’s 24-yard punt return along the right sideline set the Raiders up with another short field, but the drive ended with Medford fumbling at the 1-yard line. That negative quickly turned positive when Jack Wojcik recovered an Ashland fumble at the four and Weissmiller scored on the next play. Charlie Gierl ran in the two-point try to make it 40-0 with 2:46 left in the half.

The Raiders opened the second half with a 64-yard scoring drive. Carbaugh got the 1-yard touchdown with 5:46 left in the third quarter, but the drive also included carries from Cory Lindahl, Rothmeier, Jude Stark and Gierl.

“Cory and Jude have been pretty much playing defense for us and they don’t really complain about playing scout team the rest of the week,” Wilson said. “They asked if they could play a little running back and I had wanted to get Jude some carries earlier in the year. It just didn’t happen. It was good to get them in and get them a couple touches. That’s always an exciting thing.” Ashland got its touchdown against Medford’s reserves on a 36-yard run by Vuorenmaa, but Medford’s reserves struck right back as a pretty 34-yard pass along the left sideline from Parker Lissner to Jace Curran led to an 8-yard touchdown run by Gage Losiewicz with 8:51 left.

Losiewicz forced an Ashland fumble that was returned for a touchdown by Mason Scott but a penalty wiped out the return. Still, the turnover gave Medford the ball at Ashland’s 27 and an 18-yard run by Tucker Phillips and a 6-yard gain by Curran set up a 3-yard touchdown run by senior Adam Kowalski with 5:19 left to close the scoring.

Medford piled up 452 yards of total offense, including 365 on the ground. Seven players rushed for at least 20 yards, led by the 96 Wilkins got on just three carries. The Raiders passed for a seasonhigh 87 yards as well with both quarterbacks connecting at least once.

Hurricanes move in

It’s back to Raider Field Friday for a 7 p.m. kickoff with the Hayward Hurricanes, who bring a two-game losing streak into the week after they got off to a 3-0 start.

Hayward opened GNC play with a 27-8 win at Antigo but lost a 13-7 defensive battle at Rhinelander and then couldn’t hang with Mosinee Friday in a 44-3 loss.

The Hurricanes will bring a spread offense to town, led by junior quarterback Alex Depew, who has completed nearly half of his 52 passes for 249 yards and four touchdowns and run for 239 yards while averaging just over 4 yards per attempt.

Four of Xzavier Stojek’s 11 receptions have gone for touchdowns and junior Brock Chucka has 212 rushing yards, 95 of which came against Mosinee.

“They’re always in shotgun and they’ll have three to four wide receivers all of the time,” Wilson said. “They’re going to stretch us horizontally and vertically. We’ll see if our defensive backfield has improved. I think it has, but this is going to be the first team we’ve seen in a little while that exclusively runs that spread to try to put you in space and get their athletes in space. It’ll fall on our Dline to get some rush and it’ll fall on our D-backs to be able to cover. We’ll see how many guys we have to commit to the box to stop the run.”

Antigo improved to 2-1 in league play by knocking off Rhinelander 24-0 Friday night. The Hodags were 4-0 overall going into that game. Lakeland prevailed in a battle of winless teams with Merrill 35-0.

Rhinelander at Mosinee is the headline game of this week in the GNC, while Lakeland is at Antigo and it’s another matchup of winless teams with Ashland visiting Merrill.

Gilman’s Joey Syryczuk hits Greenwood quarterback James Durrstein just as he is about to pass, forcing a bad throw that is intercepted and returned for a 55-yard touchdown by Max Ustianowski during the second quarter of the Pirates’ 61-0 win at Greenwood Friday.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS