INDIAN RIVER – A historic season for the Inland Lakes football program continues this weekend in the MHSAA 8-player Division 1 state semifinals.
The upstart Bulldogs (8-1) are in their first season of 8-player football and will travel to Suttons Bay Saturday afternoon.
Prior to this year, Inland Lakes had never won a MHSAA postseason title in football and had gone 0-18 over the last two seasons.
“We already kind of settled in on we knew this was going to be a transition year,” Inland Lakes coach Travis Meyer. “But it happened to be a transition to 8-man football instead of just changing our offense.
“When we decided to make the switch to 8-man, they were just ready to go they saw the opportunity there and it puts us on an even playing field. We’ve only got 170-some kids in our school and that’s all the other schools this size playing 8-man, rather than scrambling through 11-man season and our guys just embraced the opportunity.”
Inland Lakes takes on a Suttons Bay (9-0) team that has gone 30-3 over the last three seasons and fell to Colon (26-14) in last year’s Division 1 title game in Marquette.
The Norsemen recorded playoff wins over Manistee Catholic Central (49-6), Whittemore-Prescott (44-0) and Gaylord St. Mary (38-22) prior to the two-month shutdown.
Saturday’s game kicks off at 1 p.m.
The winner of Saturday’s semifinal will face either Martin or Adrian Lenawee Christian in the state championship game next week.
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