Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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Noxon’s a no-no this week. Those expecting to see how the Noxon girls and boys basketball teams performed last week on these pages are sure to be disappointed as neither team played a game. Looking to make up for lost time, both Noxon teams have two games on tap this week, the Devils were to have visited neighboring Clark Fork, Idaho for games with the Wampus Cats Tuesday, and will be hosting Two Eagle River Friday. Originally scheduled for Saturday, the boy-girl doubleheader at Troy has been rescheduled for Feb. 6. Results of the Clark Fork g...
The upper MHSA classes have absolutely nothing on Class B-C when it comes to wrestling in western Montana. The Thompson Falls Blue Hawks finished a strong seventh and three other Western B-C squads finished in the top nine in team scoring in the 20-school strong Bob Owen Invitational in Polson Friday and Saturday. Class A power Frenchtown won the meet with 186 points, Lake City out of Coeur d’Alene was second with 179, Class AA schools Belgrade (176) and Missoula Sentinel (165) were third and fourth, Mission-Charlo (143) fifth, Superior (...
With a total of 14 wrestlers signed up, the Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen wrestling team will hit the mats for the first official competition of the season in the Mission Quadrangular, also involving Mission, Eureka and Thompson Falls, Thursday evening. At press time, there were rumors that the mixer format planned for Mission’s Quadrangular would be changed to a dual format, but verification of that fact could not be established. Each team would wrestle in two dual matches each if that format is accepted. Head coach Jeff Kujala and a...
No one knows Noxon basketball like Ryan Weltz, you could even call him Red Devil Ryan. Once a star player for the Red Devils while he was in school in the West End, Red Devil Ryan has spent many of the winters of his adult life since then coaching either the boys or girls. One year removed from a one-year stint as the Lady Devils' coach, Weltz agreed to coach the Noxon boys team this season and guided his young charges into the Western C Tip-Off tournament in Ronan last week to open the season,...
Until we meet again then. The Thompson Falls Blue Hawk boys opened season play with a 79-55 non-conference road loss in Florence Friday. Falls coach Jake Mickelson took the loss a bit personally as his little brother Beau Neal lit up the Hawks for a game-high 29 points in leading the Falcons to the win. “The Florence boys will have a good season,” he said, “and my little brother Beau had 29 against us. I think we have a very good chance of competing with them later on, we just have to do a better job defensively on their shooters and our offen...
The Lady Hawks plan on fighting to the bitter end this season. Opening the 2019-2020 campaign in Florence last Friday, coach Chadd Laws and his Hawks went down to a 47-41 loss, but, tellingly refused to go down without a fight. Although graduation hurt Florence after last season, when the Falcons advanced all the way to the State B championship game, the Bitterroot Valley squad is still picked to be one of the best in the Western B ranks this season. “This was a great season opener for us, a game against a quality opponent,” Laws said. “Fl...
The Horsemen are off and running. Coach Tyrel Allen and his Plains Horsemen broke out to a galloping start to the season in the Western C Tip-Off tourney in Ronan last week, rolling Victor 60-13 Friday and trumping Clark Fork 55-28 Saturday. Now 2-0 in non-conference play, the Horsemen will entertain the Valley Christian Eagles Friday and the Seeley-Swan Black Hawks Saturday, before opening District 14C conference play with a game at Charlo Tuesday. In his second year as head coach, Allen has a better point of reference for looking at things...
These Heat players are hot, and bound to get even hotter before they are through. The Hot Springs Savage Heat girls started the hoop season out en fuego, on fire, with two big wins at the Western C Tip-Off tournament in Ronan last week. Coach Richard Jackson and his too-hot-to-handle Heat burned Lincoln 49-19 and surprising Philipsburg 49-40 Friday and Saturday to open the season with two wins. The 2-0 Heat will host Victor in another non-conference game Saturday. Jackson liked how his girls started out the season. “We came out ready to p...
Better than advertised. Coach Eddie Fultz and his Plains Trotters lost a lot of talent from last year’s 15-8 team, players like All-State C guard Kassidy Kinzie, stellar guards Haley Josephson and Natalee Deschamps, and starting center Rachel Huenink, but they still have a quality team as evidenced by their strong performances in last week’s Western C Tip-Off Tournament in Ronan. The Trotters cruised to a 50-14 win over Victor Friday and then put the brakes on the Clark Fork Mountain Cats, shutting down the Superior-Alberton girls 45-34 Sat...
The Scott Fredrickson era started out with a win as the Hot Springs Savage Heat basketball boys worked their way to a 57-53 victory over the Lincoln Lynx Friday in the Western C Tip-Off tournament in Ronan. The Savage Heat also played Philipsburg in the tourney Saturday and reportedly lost that game, but scoring was not available for it. After Luke Waterbury went down with an ankle sprain Friday, the Heat were down to only five players total for the game with P-burg. Although Waterbury will remain sidelined with what Fredrickson described as a...
They are young but they are growing up as they play their way through the season. The very young Noxon Lady Red Devils, playing without any seniors for new coach Cortney Vohs, opened the hoop season in the Western C Tip-Off tournament in Ronan last week, falling to Darby 44-39 Friday before rebounding to top Victor 52-19 Saturday. Now 1-1 in non-conference play, the Devils’ next scheduled game is another non-conference tilt at Clark Fork, Idaho Dec. 17. When reached by email early this week, Vohs said this year’s youthful team – compr...
Call it an early Christmas gift from the sports gods – the gift of fair competition, of heavenly bodies in motion in friendly battle with like-minded individuals. Giving the gift of sports once more, the high school seasons for basketball and wrestling start this week across Montana, with a lot of that action likely happening in a gym near you. In wrestling, the Bob Owen Invitational in Polson will get things started Friday and Saturday, and the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk grapplers will be t...
New Thompson Falls High School head wrestling coach Mike Thilmony was the best available man for the job. Now the head honcho, the man in charge of Blue Hawk wrestling, Thilmony’s first official act as coach will be guiding his 15-strong team into the Bob Owens Invitational in Polson Friday and Saturday. Thilmony said the mat action is slated to begin at 3 p.m. Friday in the 20-team tournament which features Class AA, A and B-C squads in one of the tougher open tourneys of any high school season in Montana. Recently hired as the head coach a...
There is a new old coach at the helm of Lady Hawk basketball, and that coach, Chadd Laws is excited about his new job. Not exactly a stranger to sports fans in these parts, Laws served as the head boys basketball coach at Thompson Falls from 2000 through 2014, after previously working as the head boys coach at Blue Sky High School in Rudyard from 1996 through 1999. Laws enjoyed success during his stint as the Hawks’ boys coach, guiding Thompson Falls to district titles in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, in addition to winning a rare Western B d...
It was a simple matter of a team needing a coach and a coach needing a team. In the end, both won out. The Hot Springs boys basketball team was in need of a coach this past off-season and put out a call for someone to step up and step in to the position vacated by Cameron Barber following last season. Recently the coach of the Terry Terrier boys hoop squad when living in that area from 2015 to 2017, Scott Fredrickson finally put in for the job and got it this fall. And Fredrickson has some coaching chops as evidenced by the job he did in...
The Hot Springs Savage Heat girls basketball team has been making noise for a few years; is it now, during the 2019-2020 season that coach Richard Jackson and his squad will reach their crescendo? Armed with a salty, senior-dominated roster and blessed with some other fine players in the underclassmen ranks, the Heat could be poised to make a run at post-season glory come February of 2020. The Heat placed fourth in an ultra-competitive District 14C tournament last winter, but have their entire starting lineup back whereas much of the league...
Thanks in large part to the school’s playoff football team, there is a renewed optimism with the Blue Hawk boys basketball team this season. Since several of their players had key roles on that stellar football team, coach Jake Mickelson and his Hawks like to think they are capable of making some post-season noise themselves this coming winter. “The kids are getting after it in practice, they seem really hungry,” Mickelson said. “We are thinking that we could do some damage this year.” By saying damage, Mickelson means winning some games, an...
All good things must come to an end and it’s the same with the 2019 prep football season in Montana. Champions were crowned in all five Montana high school classifications as the grid season concluded with games across the state last weekend. The Bozeman Hawks kicked off championship weekend in Montana by going into Butte and handing the hometown Bulldogs a 49-28 defeat to win the Class AA title Friday night. In the Class A championship, the Miles City Cowboys rounded up a 35-7 win over Laurel in an all-Eastern A final in Miles City. In M...
They have walked in the footprints of the Bigfoot, and their wrestling lives will never be the same. Members of the Blue Hawk Wrestling Club competed in the Bigfoot Battle in Spokane last weekend and local youth wrestlers made their marks in one of the biggest tournaments of its type in the country. “There were over 1,400 wrestlers from various parts of the country, and the tournament was very tough, as it always is,” club coach Mike Thilmony said. “I was very proud of our kids as I felt they competed very hard and fought through some tough...
The Thompson Falls Blue Hawks were record wreckers in their first season of 8-Man football, which only recently ended with a road loss to No. 1 Fairview in the State playoff quarterfinals. Marking new 8-Man Thompson Falls school records in all categories, the Hawks also made their imprint on the Montana state record books. All 2019 season statistics for the Blue Hawks were released last week. A very productive rushing offense keyed by seniors Trey Fisher and Nate Wilhite was the main impetus to...
Good football teams don’t just happen, good players make them happen. The Western Conference 6-Man champion Hot Springs Savage Heat had a lot of good players making things happen this past season. A by the numbers look at the Heat’s golden, recently completed 10-1 season, which ended only with a loss in the quarterfinals of the State playoffs, reveals in clear statistical detail how coach Jim Lawson’s boys got it done this season. One of only two seniors on the Hot Springs squad, Brandon Knuds...
Turn out the lights, the party's over... OK, well not quite over; but it's never over, you'll see what we are talking about if you continue reading this column. Yes, sports fans we are very close to the end of one season but on the cusp of the next, you see, or you should see by now, that the cycle of sports never really, truly ends. One thing that I have learned in this business is that the ending of one sports season always leads to the beginning of the next. And it is happening again before o...
No one really loses at this point of the season. Look around folks at all this hub-bub about football playoffs, volleyball tournaments and championship cross country meets that has been going on these last few weeks. There is a reason for all the excitement and peculiar form of post-season optimism that comes with it. One more race, game or match, one last chance to prove yourselves worthy. When it counts most under the bright lights of win or lose or go home for good. This is the time of year everybody aims for and wants to be part of – the p...
HOT SPRINGS – They played with a lot of heart and a lot of smarts but, in the end, flesh and bone can carry you only so far. The simple laws of physics involved in the playing of football, including mass and the forces exerted through rapid acceleration and sudden, violent collisions of moving bodies of variable sizes also comes into consideration. Faced with all that and still being able to stare down defeat with a valiant effort in the face of long odds is the mark of true champions. A mark c...
EUREKA – They were hoping and playing for Bozeman but the Lady Hawks' mighty fine volleyball season ended in Eureka Saturday with a third place finish in the Western B divisional tournament. Since only the top two teams – champion Florence and runner-up Anaconda – move on to the State B tournament, coach Sandra Kazmierczak and her talented Lady Hawks just missed out on making the big show but still brought home a third place Western B trophy. That will sit alongside the 2019 District 7B champ...
