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Independently owned since 1905
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That is one tough way to start a season. The Thompson Falls Lady Hawk softball team opened season play with a doubleheader at Florence Saturday, for the second straight season starting out against the defending State B-C champions on their own field. With Florence expected to be a powerhouse team once more, the home-standing Falcons appear to be capable of meeting those sky-high expectations again and swept the Hawks 13-1 and 16-0. Lady Hawk coach Jared Koskela said his team competed hard in Florence. “That is a tough way to start, playing t...
Hot Springs High School will once again host the annual Dave Tripp Memorial track and field meet in Polson Friday, with most local teams expected to attend. The Savage Heat track and field team began competition for the season participating in the Frenchtown Invitational held at Missoula Big Sky Saturday. Freshman Katelyn Christensen was the only Savage Heat athlete to score in the Frenchtown meet, throwing the javelin 105 feet, 9 inches to take sixth place in that event....
It’s been a slow start to the prep sports seasons in western Montana; much slower for some teams. Mostly due to Montana’s spectacular late winter weather, Sanders County’s golf teams in Thompson Falls and Plains have not played yet, and either has the Plains-Hot Springs Trotters softball team. Although more nasty weather is forecast through the later part of this week, all three of those teams should get their chances to finally take to the courses and fields in the coming days. In golf, Plains and Thompson Falls will both field boys and girls...
It's about time high school spring sports actually got going, it is April after all. Finally, after weeks of delays, cancellations and rescheduling; and wrestling with snow banks and lingering winter weather, the athletes of Sanders County will get a chance to show their stuff in actual competition beginning this week. In high school sports, the belated track and field season will get going in a big way Saturday with two long-awaited meets in the Frenchtown Invitational, which has been moved to...
by John Hamilton Trae Thilmony is not just another good wrestler, he is now a lot more than that, a Montana Open champion in fact. The Thompson Falls freshman added to his growing list of impressive wrestling accomplishments last weekend by sweeping to the title of the 15 and Under, 116 pound class in the prestigious Montana Open at the Metra in Billings. Thilmony conquered the 36-man field of wrestlers in his bracket by going 5-0 over Saturday and Sunday in Billings, outpointing Houston...
If there is strength in numbers, the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk track and field teams should be just fine this spring. Armed with a large turnout of athletes – 24 boys and 17 girls have signed on for Thompson Falls track and field – second-year head coach Trenna Ferris and her forty-one strong team of runners, jumpers and throwers have been busy trying to practice their specialties in the face of late-winter weather that has forced many practice sessions indoors up to now. Improving weather ove...
The Hot Springs track and field team, after several weeks of weather-challenged practicing in the Spa City, will officially open the season in the Frenchtown Invitational April 6. Led by State C-qualifier Tyler Carr, the only Savage Heat thinclad to advance on to the State C meet last spring (in the 110 meter hurdles), coach Bethany White has a total of 13 student-athletes on board for this season’s campaign. In addition to Carr, Claire McAllsiter and Elena McAllister are Hot Springs’ other seniors, Cameron Stearns, Thea Weckerle and Ang...
Sanders County seniors Delaney Weltz of Noxon and Kassidy Kinzie of Plains have finally been honored as members of the Montana Class C All-State basketball team. With the announcement of their being added to the All-State C team coming late last week, The Ledger was unable to publish this story until receiving verification from Charlo Athletic Director Shane Bartschi, who was in charge of releasing the District 14C All-Conference basketball teams to the press. As a rule in Montana sports,...
Another year older and another year wiser, the still-young Thompson Falls softball team looks to be much more competitive this spring. Finally finding their field after late-winter storms buried it in snow, the 15-strong Lady Hawks have been busy practicing what softball they can where they can and are aiming to begin regular season play at Florence April 6. The Hawks, under then first-year coach Jared Koskela, struggled with numbers and experience last spring, but look to be much more competitive this season, Koskela said. “We are in a lot b...
Wrestling never sleeps, not for those athletes constantly striving to get better. Two of those kind of grapplers, Elijah Ratliff and Roman Sparks will be heading to Iowa this weekend for the Middle School and High School National Duals tournament in Des Moines. Four other wrestlers on the rise – Trae Thilmony, Weston Block, Hartleigh Block and Neala Block – will compete in the Montana Open at Metra Park in Billings this weekend. The National Duals bring together promising middle school and hig...
Already a week behind the curve thanks to the weather, coach Matt Havens and his Noxon track and field team is scheduled to compete in the Eureka Invitational in Lincoln County April 6. Originally slated to open the season at the Jim Johnson Memorial meet in Frenchtown this Friday, the Red Devil thinclads will instead start the season in Eureka as the Johnson meet has officially been canceled due to Montana’s late but great flurry of winter weather. Havens said seniors Levi Brubaker, Edison VanVleet and Delaney Weltz, and junior Rylan Weltz l...
Who needs a prom when you can be the queen of your own dance? Sarah Detlaff made a date with destiny and, along with nine other Thompson Falls student-athletes, attended the Montana Powerlifting high school championships at Capital High School in Helena Saturday. And, although she gave up going to her last high school prom to attend the meet and the awards ceremony immediately thereafter, she ended up being crowned queen of the powerlifting ball in Helena anyway due to another dazzling lifting p...
The Plains track and field and golf teams have their athletes and coaches on board, now it is up to Mother Nature as to when the meets and matches can actually begin in snow-choked western Montana. In track and field, long-time head coach Denise Montgomery and assistant James Jermyn return to guide Plains and, in golf, Lisa Brown returns to coach the Trotters and on-again, off-again coach Don Stamm (who also had quite a career coaching Plains track and field as well as golf in the past) has signed on to once again coach boys golf. A...
Softball practice right now is not all that it could be, but it is what it can be. Reduced to working out indoors or in parking lots or other such snow-free areas, coach Michele Bangen says her Plains-Hot Springs Trotters are still getting the work they need to prepare for the rapidly approaching season. “We can still break it down and work on our mechanics – pitching, throwing, hitting,” she said. “We are having productive practices, we just can’t work on everything but are doing what we can.” Armed with an interesting mixture of experienced...
It may be hard to visualize it right now being as the greens and fairways are still blanketed in late-winter snow, but the high school golf season has already begun; albeit not out on the greens and fairways. “We haven’t been able to practice out on the course yet,” Thompson Falls coach Mike Bates said Tuesday. “But I noticed some open grass on the grounds at the junior high today, so we will go there and work on our chipping some.” Although the Hawks’ first scheduled match is the Florence Invitational in Hamilton on March 30, Bates says...
Each tournament wrestled provides all the proof you need: the grappling youths of Thompson Falls will not stay down on the mat, they will keep getting back up to wrestle more. The Blue Hawk Wrestling Club has kept their grapplers in the wrestling fight the past few weeks, taking 30-some wrestlers into battle two weeks ago at the Kootenai Classic in Libby March 2, and sending approximately 15 into last weekend’s Montana AAU championships in Great Falls. At the Montana AAU, which doubles as a qualifier for Montana All-Star teams to be put t...
There was redemption, there was heartache but, in the end, the Montana high school basketball seasons closed out last weekend in state tournaments across the Big Sky Country last week. Bigfork repeated as the State B boys champions, but fellow western Montana teams like the Missoula Hellgate and Arlee boys and the Florence girls tasted defeat after winning their ways into state championship games. For a more in-depth view, let us take a tournament-by-tournament look at what went down hoop-wise in Montana high school basketball last week. ***...
It may not look, or feel much like spring yet, but the calendar argues otherwise and high school sports teams in Sanders County will begin practice for the softball, track and field and golf seasons next Monday, come snow or high water or both. Of course, some of those practices set for the coming weeks will be forced indoors or cancelled all together, depending on what Mother Nature has in store for the winter-weary folks of Montana. On the track and field scene, Thompson Falls thinclads will again be guided by Trenna Ferris, who will be...
The high school football careers of Tyler Carr and Tyler Knudsen of Hot Springs and Levi Brubaker of Noxon are not quite over, they have one more game to play, this time as teammates for the Blue squad in the 23rd Annual 6-Man All-Star Football Game at 7 p.m. in Custer June 1. Another senior baller from Sanders County, Edison VanVleet of Noxon, has been chosen as an alternate for the Blue team in the all-star game, which pits players from the Western C and Eastern C 6-Man ranks on the Blue team against all-stars from the Northern and Southern 6...
The west is definitely not the best when it comes to girls Class C basketball. In the only state tournament to be played in Montana last week, the Class C girls met up at Four Seasons Arena in Great Falls and the Box Elder Bears eventually repeated their 2017 championship, defeating Northern C champions Roy-Winifred, whom the Bears had lost to the week before in the divisional championship game, 48-42 in the title game. Charlo and Arlee, the first and second place teams from the District 14C and...
RONAN – The Lady Hawks played hard but, in the end lost two games and were eliminated from the Western B divisional tournament in Ronan last week. Coach Doree Thilmony and her Lady Hawks fell 65-25 to Loyola Thursday and completed season play in a 48-33 loss to Eureka Friday. Florence won the Western B crown, defeating rival Loyola 43-38 in the championship. Loyola and Deer Lodge were set to face off in a Monday night challenge, but the winter weather visiting Montana this week forced the r...
RONAN – Nobody said that playing in the Western B divisional tournament would be easy. And it wasn't easy, at least not for the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk boys. Coach Jake Mickelson and his Hawks lost 50-32 to Deer Lodge in the first round Thursday and were then eliminated from the tourney 61-41 by Florence Friday morning. The defending State B and regular season District 7B champion Bigfork Vikings won the Western B divisional tournament crown, defeating Loyola 53-43 in the title game Saturday n...
It was an impromptu archery qualifying tournament, but a tournament nonetheless. Under the direction of National Field Archery Association State Tournament Director Tony Bierwagen, Thompson Falls hosted a Northwest Sectional Indoor Target Shoot at the Falls junior high gym Saturday and Sunday. Several local archers, including a 4-H youth team from Kalispell and its coaches, took advantage of the qualifying opportunity when alerted it to it by Bierwagen late last week. Bierwagen said holding the...
The idea is to get more kids interested in wrestling, and the vehicle for delivering more wrestlers to the mat is The Making a Difference tournaments being held across the country. Blue Hawk Wrestling Club coach and organizer Mike Thilmony said a new concept for introducing more kids to wrestling, called Making a Difference tourneys – free tourneys that give kids the opportunity to try out their wrestling skills in a low-pressure environment that exposes them to what USA Wrestling is all about – are being held this year, and that members of...
The season is dead; long live the season. The high school basketball season officially ended for all Sanders County teams last week with the elimination of the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk boys and the Lady Hawks from the Western B divisional tournament in Ronan. The six other teams from Sanders County – the boys and girls squads from Hot Springs, Noxon and Plains – were done for the season after the District 14C tourney in Pablo the week before. Which leaves us all now watching the other local teams, the ones that beat ours out at the dis...
