View from the Sidelines

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 Montana’s own city of Manhattan, a small but growing town a little west of Bozeman, the Eureka Lions turned back the Manhattan Tigers (actually a cooperative program between Manhattan Christian and Manhattan) 20-6 for Eureka’s third State B title in the last three years.

Formerly one of Thompson Falls’ most bitter rivals, the Eureka Lions’ feat of three State titles in only four years matches the run of the Shann Schillinger-led Baker Spartans in Class B in the early 2000s.

Playing in the only neutral-field championship in Montana this season, the Fairview Warriors dismantled the Clark Fork Mountain Cats 70-6 on Herb Klindt Field on the campus of Rocky Mountain College in Billings Saturday to win the 8-Man championship.

The Thompson Falls Blue Hawks had finished second to Clark Fork in the Western 8-Man division and had already played Fairview at Fairview, taking a 66-6 loss in the State quarterfinals two weeks ago. The Hawks finished one of their most successful football seasons, and first as an 8-Man entity with a 9-2 win-loss record.

The champion Warriors, who finally won a title after years of being very close to the top, complete play with a 12-0 mark and the Mountain Cats finish at 11-1.

Speaking of final comeuppance in the 6-Man game, the Jordan Mustangs corralled the Wibaux Mustangs by a score of 70-14 in Jordan Saturday, reversing the result of a 70-27 loss to those same Longhorns in Wibaux in 2018.

The Hot Springs Savage Heat, who lost to MonDak in the 6-Man quarterfinals this fall, are very familiar with Jordan, after having lost a 74-57 shootout to the Mustangs in Hot Springs in the 2018 quarterfinals. The Western division champs, the Heat finished this season with a 10-1 record and the school’s seventh conference title in eight years.