Kingsford’s Brock Flaminio (87) and Matthew Couillard (56) work to bring down Menominee’s Jackson Myszak on Friday night at Flivver Field. (Ron Deuter photo)

KINGSFORD — After some losses, there isn’t much more to do than to tip your cap.

That’s essentially what Kingsford head football coach Mark Novara did after his Flivvers fell to the UPSSA top-ranked Menominee Maroons 49-14 on Senior Night at Flivver Field.

“Got beat,” Novara said. “Got beat up front, got beat everywhere. The fact is that’s a better football team than we are right now.”

Truthfully, the Maroons (8-0) are likely a better football team than everyone else in the Upper Peninsula at this point. Coach Chad Brandt brought a squad Friday night that played like a juggernaut.

With an explosive and powerful offense, Menominee scored more than twice as much against the Flivver defense than any other team has this season.

“I thought we had a really good defensive game plan for how to stop them, but they executed better than we executed on that side of the ball,” Novara said.

Senior running back Clayton Miller led the Maroons on the ground with 126 yards on 16 carries and three touchdowns. Senior Dawson Bardowski also tallied three touchdowns — one on a run, one on a pass reception and one on a punt return.

Throw in senior quarterback Tanner Theuerkauf, who was an all-state basketball player a year ago, and Menominee has weapons from sideline to sideline.

Novara explained what his team tried to accomplish to contain such a high-powered attack.

“It was more of a lot of edge pressure, just to keep from (allowing them) to run around the edge and they ran around the edge quite a bit.”

Ironically concerning how the game turned out, the Flivvers scored first. Gaige Sorenson recovered a fumbled punt at the Menominee 35-yard line after both teams had gone three-and-out.

After the turnover, Kingsford (6-2) drove to paydirt in seven plays, capped off by a 5-yard pass from Blake Tomasoski to Brock Flaminio. The drive was sparked by a 26-yard double reverse pass from wide receiver Sid Olson to Tomasoski that set the Flivvers up at the Menominee 7-yard line.

Sorenson tacked on the extra point kick and Kingsford held a 7-0 lead with 5:37 remaining in the opening quarter.

But after that 35-yard drive, the Flivvers managed just 60 more yards the rest of the game, which finished with a running clock. The Maroons held Kingsford to a mere 23 yards rushing on 27 carries, which included two sacks.

The Flivvers also finished with 72 yards passing on five completions in 10 attempts.

“We threw everything but the kitchen sink at them, we just got beat,” Novara said. “It comes back down to we got beat up front, we got beat athletically, we got beat.”

After the Flivvers took the lead, the Maroons responded with a methodical 14-play 75-yard TD drive, which ended on a 19-yard pass from Theuerkauf to Bardowski.

The Maroons missed the PAT kick to stay behind 7-6.

That deficit lasted just three more minutes. After the Flivvers punted, Bardowski got loose again for a 30-yard TD on a double handoff to give the visitors a 12-7 lead with 8:50 left before halftime.

With 1:13 left before the halftime break, Miller burst in from the 10-yard line, and after Theuerkauf connected with Nathan Komp for the 2-point conversion, Menominee held a 20-7 lead at intermission.

The second half didn’t start much better for Kingsford as Bardowski sprinted for a 67-yard punt return and caught the 2-point conversion pass from Theuerkauf to leave the Maroons with a 28-7 advantage.

On the ensuing kickoff, the Flivvers threw their last punch of the night when Jack Olson took off for a 95-yard TD return that pulled his team within 28-14 with 10:08 left in the third.

“He’s probably the fastest kid in the U.P., right?” Novara said. “We tried to get him the ball in space a little bit and let him do his thing.”

However, Menominee struck back immediately on a 70-yard scoring strike from Theuerkauf to Komp to reestablish its three-TD edge and effectively end the competition.

Miller scored on a 4-yard run at the 4:21 mark of the third quarter and then recorded his third TD on an 8-yard burst with 9:21. He also connected on his PAT kick that put the game into a running clock scenario for the rest of the game.

The Flivvers will travel to Marquette to face the Sentinels (5-3) in their final regular-season game on Friday, Oct. 24.

“Simply, we can have a lot more football left if we want to,” Novara said after his team saw its six-game winning streak end. “We have to go come back to work on Monday and … everyone has got to look at themselves and say, ‘Hey where can I get better? What can I do better?’ Coaches included, players included.

“And we’ve got another tough opponent next week in Marquette. I don’t think they get enough respect throughout the U.P. because we don’t see them a bunch against U.P. teams. That doesn’t’ mean that they’re not a really good football team because they are.”