If a 1-5 start to the season didn’t dispirit the St. Michael-Albertville football team, a road game in a little cold rain couldn’t come close to dampening their hopes of achieving something great.

The Knights, a No. 5 seed in the Class 6A playoffs, showed their mettle Friday, physically besting Rosemount, a No. 1 seed, 14-0.

The Knights are a young team, starting 16 underclassmen. They learned some hard lessons during the season, losing to such top teams as Maple Grove, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie early.

Head coach Jared Essler admitted he was concerned at times that his young team wouldn’t be able to weather the storm.

“We talked a lot about faith,” Essler said. “The definition of faith is belief without evidence. We didn’t have a lot of evidence, but we kept telling ’em there’s a good team in there somewhere. And they kept coming to work.”

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St. Michael-Albertville finished the regular season with consecutive victories and beat Osseo handily in the first round of the playoffs. Essler could see the team that beat Rosemount on Friday coming.

“The last couple weeks we’ve grown by leaps and bounds,” he said. “We’re running the ball better and not making silly mistakes.”

The team making mistakes Friday was the host. The Irish fumbled on their second play from scrimmage. St. Michael-Albertville turned it into points 11 plays later when Braylon Bohm scored from 6-yards out for a 7-0 lead.

That score lasted for much of the night, until Rosemount fumbled the ball away again in the fourth quarter. And again, St. Michael-Albertville made the Irish pay, marching 89 yards in 15 plays for the game-clinching score by running back Wyatt Mosher.

“Coach has been talking all season about how hard our schedule is and that it was going to pay off in the playoffs,” Mosher said. “Our key goals before that game were to run the ball, stop the run and win the turnover margin, and we did all three. We were ready.”

St. Michael-Albertville improved to 5-5 with its fourth straight victory. Rosemount, which had been riding an eight-game winning streak, fell to 8-2.

After the game, Irish coach Jeff Erdmann summed up his team’s communal disappointment after such a strong season.

“Three-thousand percent,” he said. “The writing’s on the wall. We always talk that the more physical team wins. And if you can stop the run, run the ball and win the turnover battle. We were 0-for-3 on those tonight. You can’t expect to win in those situations.”