It had been a season of near misses for the North Muskegon football team, starting with three straight losses by a single point.

On Friday night, North Muskegon got a well-deserved 1-point victory.

The host Norse edged visiting Muskegon Catholic 28-27 win and, in the process, knocked the Crusaders out of a possible playoff berth.

“These guys came to work this week and put all the distractions aside,” North Muskegon coach John Slocum said. “It was a very satisfying way to end the season.”

Muskegon Catholic, which finished the season with a 4-5 record, looked to be in position for a game-winning score with a 4th-and-1 at the North Muskegon 7-yard line with less than 30 seconds remaining.\

After a timeout, the Crusaders elected to go for a first down instead of a potential game-winning field goal and the Norsemen defense rose to the occasion, stopping the Crusaders short of a first down.

“We knew with that formation that they were going to run it and we made an adjustment and stopped them,” Slocum said. “We couldn’t stop that play against Oakridge a couple of weeks ago, but we did a good job tonight.”

Both offenses got untracked early as the teams combined for 28 first-quarter points.

MCC opened the scoring on a 62-yard run from Damon Armstrong that was quickly answered by a 61-yard TD pass from Drake Cooke to London Burris, a WMC senior.

MCC struck right back on a 2-yard scoring run from Kevin Wickstrom, but NM made it 14-14 before the quarter ended when Cooke hit Burris on a 14-yard TD pass.

The Crusaders took a 21-14 lead on Wickstrom’s 1-yard run in the second quarter, but once again NM countered as Cooke connected with Burris on 6-yard scoring strike that made the score 21-20 MCC at halftime.

The Norsemen took the lead for good on Cooke’s fourth TD pass of the game when he hit Aaron Jones on a 6-yard pass in the third quarter.

Cooke than hit Carter Gust with a two-point conversion pass that ended up being the winning points. MCC failed on its two-point conversion after Armstrong’s 5-yard TD run in the fourth quarter.

The Norsemen, who finished the season with a 4-5 record, rushed for 142 yards and passed for another 163 yards.

John Waller, a WMC junior, lead NM with 60 yards rushing on 11 carries and Cooke was 13-of-25 passing for 163 yards.

Burris finished with eight catches for 139 yards and Aaron Jones caught four passes for 37 yards.

MCC finished with 399 yards rushing on 63 carries with Armstrong gaining 114 yards on eight carries.

Jesse Tromp led the NM defense with seven tackles and Robbie Wygant and Brandon Belanger had six tackles each.

Jacob Budde had five tackles and an interception for Catholic.