Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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The Thompson Falls Blue Dingers continued their undefeated record after claiming a 23-4 victory over the Plains Beasts in minor league play at the Amundson Sports Complex in Plains last week. "They played fantastic," said Jon Haun, head coach for the Blue Dingers. Haun said that he even sent in two boys - Louis Hannum and Elliott Susic - that had never pitched to the mound and they did well. As of last Tuesday, the Blue Dingers had three wins and no losses, with the exception of an exhibition...
No one from the general public showed up for the Plains School levy forum, but that didn't seem to bother Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Walsh, who held the get together specifically to answer questions from the community. "I'm not discouraged by the numbers," said Walsh, who held the open forum in the school library last Thursday in an effort to inform the public about the purpose of this year's levy request. There were people from the school at the forum - two teachers, two school board members,...
Most people know that April 15 is tax day, but it’s also Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating when Robinson broke the “color barrier” in baseball, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. On April 15, every baseball player wore number 42, Robinson’s jersey number, as Major League Baseball has done for the last 15 years. Robinson has been celebrated time and time again for helping to integrate African-Americans into the game, and rightly so. He received death threats, racial slurs, and indignities. The Los Angeles Dodgers, (they moved to Califor...
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The Thompson Falls Lady Hawks took first place at the Thompson Falls Invitational at Previs Field last week where more than a dozen schools threw, jumped and ran for the farthest, highest and fastest distances and times. The Lady Hawks did it, accumulating 86 points for top honors, and the Blue Hawks took fifth place with 53 points. Thompson Falls finished the competition with 10 first places and four second place medals, said Trenna Ferris, head coach for the last seven years. The Thompson...
The U.S. Forest Service Plains-Thompson Falls Ranger District has a new leader, and he's no stranger to the workings of the woods. Curtis Rintz has worked in the forests, deserts and high mountains and is now a ranger in the Lolo National Forest. The 62-year-old took over as the district's ranger in Plains only six weeks ago and is quickly getting familiarized with his new role, the district's missions and its crew. "I am excited to be here. It's a challenge but I love it," said Rintz, who has...
The average age of people getting married in the United States was early 30s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but last week's wedding at Plains School might throw a wrinkle in their statistics. Six-year-old Malia Hart (as the letter Q) and 5-year-old Finley Williams (as the letter U) were "married" in the classroom by their kindergarten teacher last Thursday. Classmate Emma Colwell served as the ring bearer and Frances LeClair was the ceremony's flower girl, placing pink flower petals at...
Plains School is asking for a $100,000 levy this year in an effort to recruit and retain qualified teachers and staff and to help better fund classroom programs. “Our levy is for learning,” said Dr. Kathleen Walsh, the school superintendent, who added that they’re going to educate the children regardless, but the levy will give the students better opportunities to be successful in the future. “The levy will allow the school community to expand and support family and community engagement while supporting expansion of academic program...
A Plains pool board was officially established last week in an effort to make the operation of the E.L. Johnson Memorial Pool more efficient this year. Five community members volunteered to be on the newly formed committee last Monday at City Hall, where the town's newest certified lifeguard trainers offered to help get this year's lifeguards trained. Seth Gibbs, Lyle Fisher and Matt Fielders completed a 21 1/2-hour Red Cross training session in Missoula the previous Sunday to become trainers...
Plains resident Tom Collins gives a special carving class to Plains High School students Emory Erchanbrack, a senior, (left) and Izzy Bakker, a junior and a foreign exchange student from the Netherlands. Collins, president of the Plains Carving Club and an expert carver, gave a four-day class to Kristen Cole's art students last week. This was the second time Collins had given the class to Plains students. He is also the coordinator for the Montana Woodcarvers Association Show at the Missoula...
The Sanders County Fair Board monthly meeting last week started with a Plains woman placing dozens of scraps of metal on the tables in front of the board members. "This could potentially cripple a horse," said Jolene Burke of Plains, referring to a large piece of metal that she and Kristy Sheehan, the fair manager, found in the dirt of the fairgrounds main arena a week earlier. She had bags of metal pieces, from a fraction of an inch to one that was nearly two feet long. She told the board that...
More than 160 people showed up at the Plains School Spring Concert last Tuesday in the school gymnasium. The hour-long concert featured the high school choir, the junior high band, the high school band, and special performances from a "Percussion Ensemble" by seniors Brenden Vanderwall, Sam Feliksa, Joe Martin, and junior Izzy Bakker, a foreign exchange student from the Netherlands. The four also entertained the crowd with an unusual percussion piece called "Klickety-Klack," which involved a...
More than 300 colorful pinwheels fluttering in the wind on the lawn at Clark Fork Valley Hospital might not halt violence against children, but hospital staff hopes they will attract enough attention to make people aware that there is a problem. Dwy Simpson, the hospital's Community Health Outreach Coordinator, and volunteer Jasmine Trull "planted" 300 blue pinwheels in the hospital's "Pinwheel Garden" in front of nursing home Friday in an effort to bring to light the evils of child abuse and...
Elk stop grazing to take a look at a possible predator in a wooded area about six miles west of Plains. The herd of about 80 elk soon dashed away. As spring progresses, the bulls will soon be sporting antlers and pregnant cows will be calving....
More than 60 soccer players from five different U11 and U10 teams gathered at the Amundson Sports Arena for the Plains Jamboree and the first games of the spring season. The rains stayed away, but the wind took the temperatures to around 40 degrees, prompting portable shelters and blanket wraps for the near 200 fans that came and went throughout the day as coed teams from Plains, Thompson Falls, Libby, and Columbia Falls faced off, each team playing two games. When not on the field, most...
The Wild Horse Little Guy Wrestling Club in Plains had its annual after season awards ceremony at Plains School Thursday to recognize the feats of its team. The biggest award — the 2024 Wildhorse Little Guy Wrestling Kenny Lee Marjerrison Award — was shared by two team members, Owen Jermyn and Billyray Holotta. Marjerrison, who passed away in 2017, had been a longtime coach for the Plains High School wrestling team and the Little Guy Wrestling program. Jermyn and Holotta both went to the state championships last week. Jermyn, who competed in...
It was only 200 yards from door to door and it took only about three weeks for the 16 vendors of Wild Horse Mercantile to move the hundreds of thousands of items to their new location, but they are now ready for the horde of customers. The Wild Horse Mercantile opened for business two weeks ago for a "soft opening," but they had their grand opening last Monday with goodies, punch and prizes. Forty-eight Easter eggs were placed throughout the store - three in each booth - containing candy or...
The Plains Community Easter Egg Hunt was bigger than ever with a larger area and a record number of eggs and egg hunters. For the second consecutive year the annual event was held on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, but this year it was moved to the Sanders County Fairgrounds and was a big hit with 351 participants ranging from under 1 year old to adults scrambling onto the grass to retrieve the colorful plastic eggs filled with candy and messages representing prizes. The event was divided int...
The Thompson Falls Lady Hawks started the softball season on fire by defeating their first two competitors with the mercy rule, dispatching Troy and Plains in a week's time and in five innings or less. The Lady Hawks defeated Troy 12-2 in five innings last Tuesday in the first game of the season. Oliva Fitchett came out on fire over the Lady Trojans, getting a no hitter three person strikeout in the first inning. The Lady Hawks were able to keep their focus and the bases loaded during the...
The Clark Fork Soccer Alliance girls are looking to settle a score against the Polson FC players during the regular season after getting beat by them in an exhibition game last week. The U18 girls teams played "just for fun" at the Amundson Sports Complex at Plains last Wednesday and were defeated 5-4, but head coach Nick Lawyer said his girls will have another chance to get back at them at the team's first real game of the season on Saturday, April 6, at Stevensville and at their only home...
A group of local senior citizens had the chance to go back to school, relive the days of their youth, and dance to the music of their generation, including a 102-year-old woman who spent a lot of time on the dance floor. Twenty-five men and women attended the Plains School's "1st Annual Super Senior Prom" in the school gymnasium last Wednesday. Several were Plains High School graduates. Five residents of the Clark Fork Valley Hospital Long Term Care took part in the event and more than a dozen...
It was students teaching students last week at Plains School where a group of seventh graders read stories to elementary students and showed the younger kids their writing styles. Sixteen students from Kati Mitchell’s Keyboarding and Computer Applications class took classic children’s stories and tweaked them by changing characters and plots and inserting their own creative writing styles and they designed their own graphics for the stories. The team of Miranda Dawson and Reese Meredith altered the story “Frozen” and made their own version call...
High school baseball season had hardly started when the Plains team was finished. The team folded last week because of a lack of players, said Principal Ryon Noland, who added that it was not an easy decision. He said he met with school board members, athletic director Marie Errecart, and Superintendent Kathleen Walsh, and seriously discussed the matter over the last few weeks. The Horsemen had nine at the first practice and had 10 last week, but head coach Richard Powers had hoped to get a few more. “I let them know what was happening to see i...
The Linderman gymnasium was wall to wall wrestlers and fans Friday and Saturday for the 2024 Montana Western Montana Championships, where almost 600 wrestlers from 34 Montana teams and one Idaho team battled in the last face-off of the season. Eleven Sanders County wrestlers finished in the top four placements. Plains was the only Sanders County team with wrestlers in the junior competition on Friday with three boys and one girl. Plains had 10 competing in the novice and middle classes on...
A man who was a prisoner during the Vietnam War certainly had a captive audience last week as guest speaker at Whitepine Grange 102. The room had a stillness of quiet for nearly 1.5 hours as Navy veteran Rod Knutson talked about his time as a POW of the North Vietnamese after his F4 Phantom jet was shot out of the sky during a bombing run in October 1965. "There were all kinds of guns shooting at us, it was utter chaos," said Knutson, who was the radar intercept officer - the back seat position...
