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Sports
By Patrick Browne
IRON RIVER/GWINN — For the past two years, the West Iron Wykon football program, under the leadership of Coach Mike Berutti, was unable to field a team at the varsity level.
Last fall, with Berutti’s Wykons outsized and outnumbered, the varsity season came to an end after the first two games.
Berutti called the decision to end the 2022 season early “heartbreaking,” when talking to the Reporter last September.
“Not just one person made the final decision,” he said at the time, “but we had to put the safety of the kids first and we simply could not field a team without putting the kids at risk of injury.”
Despite the cancellation of the varsity program, the junior varsity team remained intact and worked towards a future with the hope of returning West Iron to the glory of years past when the program was recognized as consistently competitive.
With the opening of the school year and sufficient numbers to warrant both a varsity and junior varsity program, on Thursday, Aug. 31, the Wykons returned to varsity play with an away game against Gwinn. The West Iron team would be playing its first game of the season, and many of the players would be taking the field for the first time as varsity players.
The first quarter of the game had the Wykon faithful hopeful. After Gwinn scored on a one-yard run and failed on the two-point conversion, the Wykons evened the score on a 58-yard run and took the lead with a two-point conversion. As the quarter ended, West Iron held the lead at 8–6. Gwinn countered in the second quarter with a touchdown and, after a failed extra point, headed to the lockers up 12–8.
The second half belonged to Gwinn despite efforts by the Wykons. Playing for the first time at a varsity level, the boys worked hard but were slowly worn down by Gwinn, which scored two touchdowns in the third quarter and one in the fourth.
The Wykons garnered 147 yards on the ground and nine first downs, but were challenged to establish a passing game and finished with negative three yards in the air to Gwinn’s 83.
At times even a loss can be viewed as a victory if seen through a lens of the journey and hard work it took to get to the start line.