People are starting to sit up and take notice of the Plains Trotters.

The Trotters defeated the Arlee Scarlets 61-50 in Arlee Saturday in their only game last week. With the District 14C tournament only two weeks away (in Ronan Feb. 20-22), coach Eddie Fultz and his Trotters have been playing well lately, and are hoping that improvement continues.

Plains has two 14C conference games on tap this week. The Trotters host 12-1 Hot Springs, the No. 7 rated Class C team in Montana, Thursday before hitting the road for a game at St. Regis Friday.

Fultz’s Trotters made some conference noise recently when they played league-leading Charlo – currently at 13-0 and the No. 4 team in the state – to a standstill before dropping a 39-30 decision to the Vikings in Plains Jan. 23.

Fultz thinks that his Trotters can contend against Hot Springs. The Savage Heat defeated Plains in the teams’ earlier meeting several weeks ago.

“We played Hot Springs pretty even most of the way in our first meeting,” he said, “and we want to play them tough again with the tournament coming up.

“I think we opened some peoples’ eyes with the way we played Charlo,” Fultz added, “and everybody is now keeping an eye on us as a result. We just want to bring that same kind of intensity with us every night.

“If we do, we could be a handful for other teams,” he concluded.

Fultz said the final score of the Arlee game was closer than the game actually was.

“We were up by 20 with like a minute and a-half left,” he said, “but Arlee scored a bunch in the end to make it appear fairly close.”

Kylee Altmiller led Plains to the win with 21 points, Kimmy Curry chipped in with 16, Kaylah Standeford 13 and Krystena Boes six.

Arlee scoring was not available.