View from the Sidelines

 


If you live in Sanders County and want to watch 11-man football this fall you had better put up the footrest on your recliner and watch it on television because no local high school will be playing it.

For the first time anyone around here can remember, there will be no games played on 100-yard fields with 11 players on each side in our fine county, only on 80-yard gridirons with either eight or six players to a side.

Since Thompson Falls was granted the right to drop down to the 8-Man game by the MHSA late last fall, the 11-man game of football was effectively eliminated from within the boundaries of our little corner of Montana, perhaps never to return in that form.

Except, of course, on TV.

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Took a peek at a couple of the schedules for fall high school sports that have trickled in to the Ledger office and Thompson Falls’ new life as an 8-Man football entity has produced some interesting matchups for the coming season.

Although the schedule is dotted with games with unfamiliar foes like Victor, Darby and Seeley-Swan, it also features contests with old rivals like Choteau, Plains and Troy, teams that the Hawks played many years before the recent realignment phase of the past few years scrambled the football formula in

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Montana.

The most interesting date for local fans on the schedule for the Hawks has to be the Oct. 4 meeting with the Horsemen in Plains. Once heated rivals in all sports, including 11-man football over the years, Plains and Thompson Falls have not actually met up on the gridiron for many years, after Plains dropped down to Class C earlier this decade.

Coach Eddie Fultz’s Horsemen have been playing 8-Man for several years and could have the advantage in that game, but don’t discard the chances of coach Jared Koskela’s Blue Hawks, who have been struggling in the 11-man version of the game for many years, either.

Showing their ability to adapt to the less-players, less-playing field version of the game, the Blue Hawks won the championship of an informal tournament of 8-Man teams at the Montana Tech football camp earlier this summer.

The Hawks will open the season playing Choteau, which also just dropped down to the 8-Man game, in Philipsburg Saturday, Aug. 31.

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Sanders County’s two 6-Man teams Hot Springs and Noxon have benefitted greatly from the move to that form of football, and both qualified for the State C playoffs last fall.

Although Lawson’s Savage Heat jumped out to hot start in the 6-Man game, winning State C titles in 2012 and 2016, Noxon’s Red Devils were just recently allowed into the 6-Man fray and have accorded themselves quite well, thank you.

Now one of the recognized powerhouse teams in Montana 6-Man football in any given season, coach Jim Lawson and his Heat advanced into the second round of the playoffs before finally falling last fall.

Coach Bart Haflich and his Red Devils made the playoffs for a second straight time last year, after playing since 1999 since the last time as an 8-Man franchise. The Devils lost their first round playoff game on the road to Geraldine-Highwood.

 

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