Red Devils win second straight game

By JASON JUNO

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Ironwood — Ironwood returns home this week with a winning record after beating Rapid River 60-28 Friday night.

The Red Devils have won two straight after dropping the season opener to Munising. Rapid River provided more of a test than they received in a 70-0 win over Carney-Nadeau the week before, but Ironwood was up to the challenge.

“We’re playing pretty confident right now,” Ironwood coach Kevin Lane said. “Not worrying too much about mistakes, those are going to happen. As long as we’re playing 100%, mistakes will happen, which is fine. We just can’t make mistakes going slow while thinking too much. We’re really stressing don’t overthink it — just play fast, play physical — and we did a really good job of that on Friday.”

Ironwood needed its defense to make plays early in Rapid River and they did.

The Devils’ Sol Lagalo returned an interception for a touchdown on the Rockets’ first drive of the game.

“Huge momentum change right away, get the momentum on our side,” Lane said. “It was a huge interception for us.”

Rapid River had first and goal on the 5 on the ensuing next possession. Ironwood came up with the stop, though.

And on their third possession, Ironwood’s Eli Ruotsala picked off a pass on the Devils’ 1-yard line.

“First three drives for them, they moved the ball fairly well and we just stepped up when it mattered,” Lane said. “We really buckled down and kept them out of the end zone, so that was awesome to see.”

Ironwood struggled to move the ball early.

“Our defense really kept us in it right away,” Lane said.

Ironwood’s offense got it going in the second quarter.

“We switched a few things up, we went to a more tight formation,” Lane said. “Our offensive line did a great job, opening up the holes, very big holes, for us. And we had multiple guys running the ball, which was awesome to see. We shared the ball quite a bit and just really ran hard, lowering your shoulder and breaking a few tackles. Like I said, those holes were huge, we hit those holes hard, it was good to see for sure.”

Ironwood stuck almost exclusively to the ground game. Brendan McCullough led the Devils with 186 yards on 18 carries and three touchdowns. Ethan Gallo was close behind with 160 yards on 22 carries with two touchdowns. Landon Buerger also ran for two scores, while finishing with 54 yards on six carries.

Nick Miskovich threw to Buerger for their only completion of the game, a 28-yarder.

Evan Oja recovered a fumble and finished with five tackles (three solo). Lagalo added a sack and eight tackles (five solo) to his pick-six. McCullough tallied 11 tackles (five solo) and Ruotala had seven (six solo).

Ironwood returns home this week to play one of the toughest teams on its schedule, Norway. The Knights received votes in the first U.P. poll of the season this week despite suffering their first loss of the season 42-20 at No. 1 Crystal Falls Forest Park.

Norway beat Stephenson 48-0 and Gogebic 54-22 in their first two games.

“Watching film, they struggled to run the ball against Crystal,” Lane said. “But Crystal’s super physical, super strong up front, they got a lot of returners up there. They moved to passing the ball, they do that really well.”

Cole Baij, a First Team all-conference quarterback last year, throws often to his brother Owen. Cole was 16 of 29 for 244 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. Owen Baij caught six passes for 144 yards and a touchdown.

“Another really good athlete,” Lane said. “So we have to key on those two for sure, hopefully stop the run, make them one dimensional and then go from there.”

Ironwood will have a little bit more depth going forward with five players joining the team last week. They include juniors Parker Osterman and Alec Huotari.

“They played for us already the last couple seasons and you could tell even the first couple days of practice, they’re picking things up quick,” Lane said. “So really excited about that.”

Sophomores Randall Kashich, Tyler Niemi and new student Josh Otto also joined the team.

“This will be huge for both our varsity and JV,” Lane said. “We played a JV scrimmage and had to bring our whole team, we shouldn’t have to do that anymore, which will be great. We’ll be able to use Mondays for practices with our old guys while our JV team still gets to be able to play in a game, so that’ll be huge. And a few of these guys, for sure expect them to contribute on the varsity level right away on Friday. Get some of our older guys a break there as well, so very excited for that.”

Friday night’s kickoff is at 6 p.m.