INDIAN RIVER — Sometimes an Upper Peninsula football team’s season comes to an abrupt halt below the Mackinac Bridge.

That’s what happened to the Munising Mustangs on Saturday afternoon.

The Mustangs were plagued by turnovers and a slow start, then weren’t able to recover as they fell to Indian River Inland Lakes 34-22.

“They were pretty good and we had some turnovers and made some mistakes,” Munising head coach Matt Mattson said. “So we didn’t help ourselves much.

“It was 14-0 and then they scored one right before halftime that didn’t help our cause. A couple missed assignments on our part and we had a couple turnovers also, I think we had two fumbles and an interception for the game.

“So three turnovers and some missed assignments really hurt us.”

This year was Munising’s first year in eight-player football and Mattson said he saw some positives heading into next season.

“There’s a lot of things to learn coaching-wise for sure, but our kids played hard,” he said. “We had to play a lot of young kids, we had a nice group of seniors, our junior class just doesn’t have many kids in it. So we had some sophomores that were up on the varsity.

“I thought we had a good year, they competed and played really hard. The teams that beat us are all still in the playoffs. They all only have one loss, they were good football teams that beat us. I think we played to our potential for most of the year. That final game, I think we had some missed assignments. But the kids still played hard the entire time and that’s all I can ask.”

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