ISHPEMING — The high school football playoffs are quickly approaching and the Westwood Patriots seems to be hitting their stride after dominating Gogebic 42-8 Friday.

Westwood was led offensively by Garrett Mann, who had 18 carries for 146 yards and three touchdowns.

Zach Carlson also had a solid night rushing for the Patriots as he finished with 10 attempts for 89 yards and a TD. As a team, Westwood combined for nearly 10 yards per try, with 46 carries for 425 yards.

“I’ve always said offensively, things have to start with our running game,” Patriots head coach Scott Syrjala said. “Gogebic is really big, so we had to try to control the line of scrimmage and move those big bodies around. I thought we were able to do that.

“We capitalized on a fumbled kickoff and then scored again. I thought we came out of the gate really well.

“We were talking the other day, and I would imagine unless you’re really a senior-laden team, we’re going into basically the last game of the season and you feel kind of like it’s Week 2 or 3.

“There’s still a lot of things that you can work on and get better at, but I think a lot of teams are in the same boat as we are. We’re trying to just keep things simple and get good at what we do. And just try to improve every day and to be honest with you, we’re trying to cherish every day.

“If we get to practice, let’s practice. If we get to play a game, let’s play a game. Do the best we can with it and just play good disciplined, hard-nosed football. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Westwood completes its regular season at 7 p.m. Thursday with a game at Negaunee.

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West Iron County 20, Gwinn 14 (OT)

At Gwinn, the Modeltowners were dealt a heartbreaking after they tied the game in the final two minutes of regulation.

The Modeltowners scored on their first drive on a 3-yard run by Mastin Love to go up 8-0 and had an opportunity to go up by two touchdowns on their next possession, but fumbled away the snap on the 1-foot line.

Still down 8-0 at the break, the Wykons got on the scoreboard with a touchdown by Nathan Thomson on their opening drive of the second half with the help of some costly Gwinn penalties. WIC didn’t get the conversion, though, so the Modeltowners remained ahead 8-6.

The Wykons did take the lead at 14-8 on another TD run from Thomson early in the fourth quarter, but Gwinn put together a late drive and got another touchdown from Love to tie the game and send it into overtime.

In the extra session, the Modeltowners got the ball first, but their field goal attempt sailed just to the right of the upright. WIC then scored on the first play of their possession on a run by Thomson to win it.

The Modeltowners finished with 171 rushing yards, while the Wykons had 144.

“We had three possessions in the first half and if there was a time of possession (kept) in the first half, I bet you we had the ball for 80 percent of the first half,” Gwinn head coach Ben Olsen said. “But we only got eight points out of it. The fumble on the 1-foot line, we were in the shotgun and we’re on our fourth-string quarterback, so we’re having problems right now taking snaps from under center.

“And we’ve been running kind of that Ishpeming-shotgun kind of series where you snap it to one of the two backs and the other one is the lead blocker kind of thing. The center just rolled one back to our backs and it went between their legs and West Iron recovered it.

“In my opinion, that was kind of the play of the game. I think if we punch it in there and go up two scores late in the first half, I think that we’re well on our way to running away with it.

“But we’ve been talking with the kids all year about fixing our little mistakes and our issues. Until we do that, and until we fix the jumping offsides, and the inadvertent face masks, and the fumbles on the goal line, we’re gonna keep coming up short in these games.”

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Cedarville 32, Munising 8

At Cedarville, the Mustangs were handed their first loss of the season after opening their first year in the 8-player game with four straight wins.

“We knew going into it that Cedarville was good,” Munising head coach Matt Mattson said. “Their tailback is fantastic. We had issues stopping their run game. The field conditions were horrible and they adjusted well and we didn’t.

“We returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown and got flagged on it and the night didn’t get better after that. It was just one of those days where I knew they were a good football team and they played better than us.

“We didn’t help ourselves. We had some penalties that really killed some drives and they’re a good football team.”

Munising ends its inaugural 8-player regular season with a home game against Lake Linden-Hubbell at 7 p.m. Friday.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Writer Ryan Stieg. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.