A South Dakota man has channeled the pain of losing a childe into a unique mission, running through every state capital in the contiguous 48 states.

He is in Montana this week hoping to reach Helena by the weekend.

“Helena will be our next capital, be number 11,” said Josh Nehring.

Nehring was on old Highway 10 outside Forsyth on Monday and was about 3,000 miles into a 17,000 mile journey.

He’s doing this all in honor of his daughter who died several years ago and he is motivated to help others.

Early Wednesday afternoon, Nehring was about 17 miles into his 58.2 mile run after starting at 3 a.m.

“The hardest part is mentally just keeping yourself in the game to get those miles in because it’s hard to just keep going,” Nehring said.

The Nehring’s daughter, Lily, died in a car crash in Wyoming seven years ago when she was 13 years old.

“We call her an old soul,” Nehring said. “A joyous girl that found fullness in life in every aspect. She loved music and dance and athletics and food and her family and church.”

“Three months after Lily had passed and I was in the darkest time,” said Stacy Nehring, Josh’s wife.

Stacy Nehring says on her first mother’s day after Lily died, it helped her to tell the story of her daughter. And she has found that helps others too.”

“I found healing in listening to their stories,” Stacy Nehring said. “And then they found healing, just sharing their story.”

The family started SRVIVRS to offer support to those who have lost a loved one or friend.

“SRVIVRS is a service organization and really to help people who are dealing with grief to find a soft place to land and a reasonable and good way to move forward in life,” Josh said.

The run, called the Black Pearl Project, started in Rapid City, South Dakota, and will take Josh and his family to 48 states to help raise awareness about grief.

The whole family is taking the trip and the six children will start home-school on Friday.

Josh is the only one running all 17,000 miles But Stacy and crew director Noah Buchholz will keep Josh company on parts of the run.

“Every week at some point, I feel like I’m definitely carried by angels,” Josh said. “And yeah, it’s awesome.”

The plan is to arrive in Billings on Tuesday and in Helena on Friday near Forsyth.

MISSOULA — The Olympics recently wrapped up this summer, a memorable run that brough the world’s top athletes to Paris to compete.

For one Montanan, that stage in 2028 is firmly in her sights.

Meet Reese Esponda, a Helena native who has been swiftly climbing the ranks in the gymnastics world, a sport from a young age she knew she wanted to pursue.

“I was watching Gabby Douglas in the 2012 Olympics, and I was doing, like, headstands,” Esponda told MTN Sports earlier this summer. “I was like, ‘Mom, I want to do that.’ And then I started.

“My biggest goal is to make the Olympics, hopefully in 2028, that’s my goal. But we’ll see.”

That was age 3 when she started. Now at age 15, the energetic and young athlete is one of the decorated up-and-coming talents in U.S. gymnastics.

And it all started in Montana, where Reese would train at Gym 406 in Helena before her and her mother moved to Missoula in 2020 to advance her skills. In Missoula she competed and worked at Roots Gymnastics & Dance.

It was a challenging dynamic with the rest of the Esponda family staying put in Helena, but the family saw Reese’s potential, so they did everything to make it work.

“People kind of looked at us and said, ‘What are you doing?’ recalled Lindsay Esponda, Reese’s mother. “It’s just a sport we couldn’t take away from her. She works harder than anybody I know, and day in and day out, puts in the hours. The frustration level sometimes gets high, but she always does with a smile on her face and just a great, great drive.”

In Missoula, Reese began to excel, and fly.

In 2022 she began to break through by competing at the Hopes Championships.

Then in 2023, it ramped up even more with appearances at the Winter Cup, the American Classic, the Core Hydration Classic and the Xfinity US Gymnastics Championships, with reappearances at most of those meets in 2024.

She made the U.S. Junior National Team late in 2023, and earlier this year competed in Azerbaijan, meaning she made the brief jump to the senior national team.

“Just like, getting to experience it all,” Reese said. “Not a lot of people get to experience what I’ve got to experience from their sport. So that’s super cool. I was like I can keep improving. I can keep getting better. And my coaches always told me, like, you can be good if you keep working hard.”

“She sets her mind to something, and she does it, and that’s really been her journey throughout the entire process of getting where she is right now,” Lindsay added.

Esponda has been climbing ever since, and earlier this year, Reese and Lindsay again relocated, this time to Texas as Reese joined the elite World Champions Centre near Houston, where she trains everyday alongside one of the greatest athletes of all time in Simone Biles along with star and Olympic medalist Jordan Chiles.

In the past she’s competed against them, and now, the Montanan gets to call some of the best gymnasts in the world her teammates.

“It’s really cool, because they know what they’re doing,” Reese said. “I can look to them and ask them questions. I’ve never been able to do that before. So having them is super nice. It’s super cool and inspiring because they’re doing like, the big skills, and then I can talk to them and ask them questions about when they were building up to those skills, like how to do it.”

The sky’s the limit for Esponda, as she aims to complete her goals to show a gymnast from Montana can make it on the grandest of stages.

“She’s still in there, working hard every day, and I think her goal is 2028 and we’ll see what happens,” Lindsay said. “It’ll be fun to watch.”

Montana State running back Adam Jones was named the FCS national freshman player of the week by Stats Perform on Monday.

Jones, a redshirt freshman from Missoula Sentinel High School, has rushed for 220 yards and two touchdowns in two games so far this season. In Week 0, he carried the ball 17 times for 167 yards, including a game-changing 93-yard touchdown, in the Bobcats’ 35-31 come-from-behind win at FBS New Mexico.

He then rushed for 62 yards and a TD on 11 carries in Montana State’s 31-7 win at Utah Tech.

For the season, he also has five catches for 28 yards.

After starting the season with two road games, Montana State plays its home opener this week against Maine. Kickoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Bobcat Stadium, and the game will be broadcast by Scripps Sports and air on local CBS affiliates across Montana.