Back of the net found on two pretty plays; Raiders win at B-W
MEDFORD BOYS SOCCER
After a few days of much-needed rest, the Medford Raiders were back on the soccer pitch Monday and got themselves back into the win column with a 2-1 nonconference victory at Baldwin-Woodville.
Adyn Gripentrog and Grant Neubauer found the back of the net to help the Raiders end a three-game losing streak that came at the end of a tough stretch of five games in eight days. Monday’s win puts Medford at 6-7-1 overall heading into the regular-season and Great Northern Conference finale tonight, Thursday, at Mosinee.
Medford aims to play spoiler in tonight’s 7 p.m. battle at Edgewood Park. Mosinee is seeking to clinch its first-ever Great Northern Conference championship as the Indians hold a two-point lead over Lakeland, who will be heavily favored while hosting Antigo at the same time. If Lakeland does win, Mosinee would need to beat Medford, whether it’s in regulation or by shootout, to win the outright title. A tie with a Medford shootout win would allow the Indians to share the title with Lakeland.
A Medford win in regulation, however, would pass the championship on to Lakeland, if the T-Birds take care of business. Mosinee beat Medford 1-0 in the teams’ first meeting Sept. 14.
Medford took care of business Monday, scoring once in each half to build a two-goal lead. That cushion became important when Blackhawk Owen Severson curled in a 20-yard shot from the right side of Baldwin-Woodville’s formation with 4:52 left in the game to cut the lead in half. His score came at the end of an end-to-end transition by the Blackhawks.
But Medford didn’t give the hosts anything close to a scoring chance after that.
Senior Adyn Gripentrog, who missed the last two games of last week due to family obligations, got Medford on the board with some fancy footwork late in the first half. The goal came at the 36:31. He stole a Baldwin-Woodville pass in the scoring third, quickly settled the ball on one bounce and then lined a left-footed bullet into the back of the net from 28 yards out.
“Everybody was pretty astounded by that,” Medford head coach Adam Derr said. “He just turned around and acted like it was no big deal, but everyone was pretty impressed by it. It was a great shot.”
Playing with the wind in the first half, Medford allowed just one shot to the Blackhawks in the first 40 minutes and it was on goal.
Medford struck again quickly in the second half. The play started with a Nathan Schuld throw-in from the midfield stripe and built into a long pass up the left sideline from Aidan Ball to Dayne Jacobson. Jacobson’s centering pass found the cutting Neubauer in stride and he finished the job, redirecting the ball to the lower right corner of the goal at 48:02.
“We emphasized passing going into the game, especially after a couple of grass games where we struggled with it a little bit,” Derr said. “I felt we definitely improved. We really tried to connect those passes and did a better job especially in the first half.”
Medford’s stats showed Baldwin-Woodville finishing with 13 total shots and nine were saved by Cale Schulz after the Blackhawks (8-5-3) gained the wind in the second half, but Derr felt those numbers were a bit misleading. Medford finished with eight shots, five on goal.
“A lot of those shots, I felt, came from a lot of distance and weren’t really troublesome at all,” Derr said. “I’d say they only really had two or three goal-scoring opportunities.
“Another point of emphasis for us was to really take advantage of the shots we had,” Derr added. “In some of the games we’ve struggled, we had a lot of shots but not a lot of them on goal. We said if we get a shot, we have to make it count and I think we did a better job of that.”
After tonight’s contest, Medford has a week to prepare for its WIAA Division 3 tournament opener. The Raiders drew the sixth seed and will head to third-seeded Shawano, who was 8-9-2 to start this week, for an Oct. 19 regional semifinal that starts at 7 p.m. The winner will face either seventh-seeded New London (7-101) or second-seeded Lakeland (11-3-1) in the Oct. 21 regional final with the higher seed hosting.
Lakeland 4, Medford 0
If you give Lakeland’s Yaroslav Myshchyshyn any space, he’ll make you pay, and the Raiders were reminded of that Thursday in a 4-0 loss to the Thunderbirds in their regular-season home finale at Raider Field.
Myshchyshyn scored twice in the first half, even though Lakeland was playing into a stiff and steady west wind, and he had a goal and an assist in the second half as Lakeland kept hope alive of winning the Great Northern Conference title.
For Medford, it was the end of a tough stretch of five games in eight days –– more for those who split time on JV and varsity –– that took its toll on the Raiders, who went 1-3-1 in that time at the varsity level.
“They’re a good team,” Derr said of the T-Birds. “This is like I’ve been saying for the last couple of days, five in seven. Five games in seven days takes its toll. Guys are getting beat up, muscle problems. It’s a tough ask for anybody. But they came out, they played hard. It was a tough game.”
Without two key starters, Medford knew to have a chance it would have to take advantage of the wind in the first half and get an early lead. Instead, Lakeland smothered Medford’s offense, something that didn’t change in the second half either.
Myshchyshyn had the game’s first big shot, but he hit the crossbar with a bullet from about 12 yards off a long pass from Oren Slemmons. Schulz made a save on a hard, close shot by Cameron Bernard at 8:10 and Bernard was wide left on another opportunity at the 10-minute mark. The scoreless tie was broken by Myshchyshyn at 20:39 when he took a pass from Slemmons that advantageously seemed to get slowed by the wind. The Raiders couldn’t punch it away and Myshchyshyn knocked a left-footed shot by Schulz who came out from the net trying to make a play on the ball.
When the Raiders were unable to clear another ball at 32:09 that was lobbed toward the goal by Marshall Holmquist, Myshchyshyn pounced on it and pushed the ball between Schulz’s legs for a 2-0 Lakeland lead.
The third goal for Myshchyshyn came early in the second half at 47:16 when he drilled a 33-yard bullet that snuck just under the crossbar.
“Defensively we played pretty well,” Derr said. “You can’t give Myshchyshyn any space. He’s going to do something and he hit two belters today. A 30-yard shot with the wind. That’s tough. We didn’t take advantage of that wind in the first half. We tried to get the ball to the outside and their defense was all over us. They didn’t give us a lot of space.”
Myshchyshyn had the long assist on Holmquist’s point-blank goal at 64:29.
“We’ve dealt with injuries, we’ve dealt with sickness, sore muscles,” Derr said. “It’s a tough stretch. No excuses. You do what you have to. The guys on the field are the guys that you have on the field and Lakeland’s a good team. We just have to regroup. We have two games left and then the tournament. I think that we can compete with both teams. We have to use
Yaroslav Myshchyshyn early in Thursday’s 4-0 loss.
Grant Neubauer keeps the ball away
MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS these next two games to tighten up those things we need to work on. Trapping, making sure that our passes are going to our players and making the right runs on offense.”
Here’s the bracket for the regional rounds of the WIAA Division 3 soccer tournament. The Antigo/Merrill game is set for Tuesday, the four regional semifinals are Oct. 19, followed by the two regional finals on Saturday, Oct. 21.
from Lakeland’s
