Montana

The Blitz: Friday’s high school football highlights (Sept. 15)

Published

10 months ago

September 16, 2023

Press Room

The Blitz: Friday’s high school football highlights (Sept. 15)

Editor’s note: The Blitz is updated as soon as we receive game results.

Class AA

• Billings West 51, Billings Senior 7: Drew McDowell tossed three touchdown strikes and Malachi Claunch scored three TDs, including a 38-yard run, and the Bears clobbered their crosstown rivals. Matt Ludwig caught two TD passes and ran for a third, and Kentucky commit Jacob Kauwe booted a 42-yard field goal. Senior got its lone TD in the fourth quarter on an 80-yard touchdown pass from Peyton Oakley to Maclain Burckley.

• No. 1 Bozeman 35, Great Falls 7: The top-ranked Hawks took care of business, scoring 21 first-half points while shutting out the Bison and cruising to their fourth win. Harley Bianchi caught a 21-yard touchdown pass from Kellen Harrison and rushed for 84 yards and his second TD. Brady Casagrande scored on an 11-yard run, and Harrison added a touchdown run in the third quarter. Riley Collette tossed a 68-yard bomb to Cole Azar for Great Falls (2-2). The Hawks rolled up 195 yards rushing and 171 yards through the air; Harrison went 12-of-15 passing for 162 yards. Rocco Lencioni didn’t have a touchdown but led the Hawks in receiving with eight catches for 132 yards.

• Helena Capital 63, Missoula Hellgate 2: Merek Mihelish passed for 188 yards and three scores, and also ran for 99 yards and two more scores, as the Bruins crushed the Knights. Mihelish hit Daniel Larson from 57 yards out on the first play from scrimmage and then found Dylan Almquist from 16 yards away for a 21-0 first-quarter lead. Capital rushed for 247 yards and averaged nearly 9 yards per carry. On defense, James Byron had a 91-yard interception return for the Bruins.

• No. 4 Kalispell Glacier 35, No. 5 Helena 7: Kash Goicoechea bulled his way for three rushing touchdowns and Kobe Dorcheus rushed for 106 yards and a score as the Wolfpack (3-1, 1-1) got off the mat from their stunning loss at Butte to rout the Bengals (2-2, 1-1). Goicoechea scored Glacier’s first three TDs for a 21-7 lead just before halftime. Dorcheus put Glacier up by three scores with a 1-yard run early in the fourth quarter and the Wolfpack put away the game with an 83-yard pass from Jackson Presley to Cohen Kastelitz. Tevin Wetzel’s 2-yard rushing score in the first quarter tied the game briefly for Helena.

• No. 2 Bozeman Gallatin 54, Great Falls CMR 6: The Raptors‘ deep and diverse offense was on full display as they rolled to their fourth straight win. Quinn Clark scored on a pick-six and grabbed a pair of touchdown passes. Reese Dahlke rushed for three scores, including a 28-yard burst, and showed his versatility with a pair of touchdown passes. Grant Vigen threw three touchdown strikes, including a 71-yard toss to Carter Dahlke. The Raptors led 27-6 after the first quarter and went up 54-6 by halftime.

• Missoula Sentinel 46, Kalispell Flathead 7: Riley Allen ran for two touchdowns and threw for two more as the Spartans (3-1, 2-0) overpowered the mistake-prone Braves (1-3, 0-2). Jaxon Allery returned a pick-6 41 yards for Sentinel, one of five interceptions. Flathead’s only score came on a 21-yard pass from Brett Pesola to Caleb Riley.

Class A

• No. 2 Lewistown 31, Lockwood 7: McKay Shobe threw a pair of TD passes and ran for another as the Golden Eagles handed the Lions their first loss of the season. Jace Dunkel hauled in one of Shobe’s TDs on a 40-yard play. Aiden Manning added a 27-yard field goal. Tyce Casterline rushed for Lockwood’s lone touchdown in the first quarter.

• No. 5 Billings Central 26, Laurel 21: Thomas Norman’s 1-yard plunge in the fourth quarter proved to be the difference as the Rams outlasted the arch-rival Locomotives. Ayden Salter rushed for 126 yards and Adam Balkenbush tossed a TD pass for Billings Central.

• Corvallis 53, Butte Central 0: Gideon Boswell set the stage with an 84-yard punt return for an early 14-point lead and then followed up with a 54-yard run return to paydirt as the Blue Devils throttled the Maroons on the way to their first 4-0 start since 1987. It was more than the Blue Devils’ defense needed; they’ve allowed six points for the entire season. Bennett Boelman highlighted the ‘D’ with a fourth-quarter interception return for a TD. Aydan Mayn added two TDs for Corvallis, which last made the playoffs in 2018.

• Glendive 21, Havre 20: Kohbe Smith’s 80-yard kick return in the third quarter put the Red Devils up 21-10, and the Blue Ponies’ 10-point rally in the fourth wasn’t quite enough. Carter Amsler threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first half to Aiden Zody-Cayco and Jason Silha for Glendive. Ciaran Courtnage matched his counterpart with TD strikes to Rhett Wertheimer and Tre Gary, and Ty Golie kicked a 30-yard field goal. The win was Glendive’s first of the season.

Class B

• No. 3 Eureka 51, Fairfield 0: AJ Truman tossed a pair of touchdown passes and rushed for a third, and Caden Pecora, Jesse Day, Josh Lambertsen and Timothy Schmidt rushed for scores — Schmidt’s went for 27 yards — as the Lions dismantled the Eagles for their fourth straight win. Eureka has won its first four by a combined score of 182-6; three of those wins were shutouts.

• No. 1 Florence-Carlton 77, Conrad 0: Mason Arlington tossed four touchdown passes, two to Drew Wagner and two to Tyler Abbott, as the high-flying Falcons obliterated the Cowboys with a 56-point first half. Abbott also returned an interception 40 yards to cap a 35-point first quarter and hauled in a 17-yard scoring strike in the second quarter. Wagner was perfect on 11 extra-point kicks.

8-Man

• No. 7 Valley Christian 38, Superior 26: Daniel Stoltsfus threw two TD passes and scored two of the game’s last three touchdowns, both on the ground, as the Eagles rallied with the final 22 points to overtake the Bobcats. Stoltsfus’ 35-yard run to close the third quarter brought Valley Christian within 26-24 before Elijah Fisher put the Eagles ahead on a 5-yard run with 10:49 to play. Stoltsfus then served up the dagger with a 2-yard run with 3:01 left. Jaxon Green scored on a 6-yard run in the first quarter and then hit Lucas Kovalsky for a 65-yard strike for Superior. Kovalsky also had a 55-yard rushing TD and led his team with 14 tackles.

• Wibaux 30, No. 2 Circle 28: Wyatt Ree rushed for three touchdowns and Will Ree ran for the other two as the Longhorns earned their biggest triumph yet in their return to 8-Man, shutting down the high-powered Wildcats. Wyatt Ree, who ran for 132 yards, scored both first-half touchdowns, from 2 and 7 yards out, and added his third on a 1-yard run at the end of the third quarter. Will Ree, who went for 157 yards on the ground, scampered in from 6 yards out early in the third quarter and then scored the game-winner from 7 yards away with 3:05 to go. Will also had three pass receptions, and Wyatt two.

• No. 3 Ennis 57, No. 6 Simms 28: Clintin Buyan threw four touchdown passes and ran for two more, and Chaz Veland rushed for three scores as the Mustangs won a showdown between unbeaten with the Tigers. Buyan ran for both scores in the second half as Ennis outscored Simms 34-8. Cole Kramer caught an 8-yard TD pass and also kicked a 26-yard field goal for the Mustangs. Vance Wingard did his part with three rushing TDs as well. For Simms, Scotty Sivumaki caught three touchdown passes, two from Hudson Rohrer. Austin Naude chipped in with a touchdown pass followed by a rushing score in the third quarter.

• No. 9 Choteau 58, Deer Lodge 14: Nate Gunderson ran for 224 yards to lead the Bulldogs’ (3-1, 3-1) punishing ground game in a rout of the Wardens (0-4, 0-4). Asher Clayton and Roan Stott evenly split another 102 yards on the round as Choteau racked up 343 overall and jumped to a 44-0 halftime lead.

• No. 5 Arlee 16, St. Ignatius 0: Kendall O’Neil threw a pair of touchdown passes and the Warrior defense did the rest, keeping the Bulldogs off the scoreboard as Arlee won its fourth straight. Kaiden Ostby hauled in a TD pass for Arlee.

• No. 1 Fairview 61, Poplar 12: Tyler Tjelde tossed four touchdown passes in the first half — two to Brock Schlothauer — and Tyler Loan threw for two TDs, caught another and returned an interception 17 yards for a TD for the Warriors (4-0, 2-0), who led 45-0 at halftime. Deacon Gackle also had a big day for Fairview, catching scoring tosses and also earning a safety. Troy Karst capped the scoring with a 70-yard kick return. Poplar (1-2, 0-2) got on the board in the third quarter on a 3-yard run by Greg Berg and scored again in the fourth on a 1-yard plunge by Kameron Reum.

• In Thursday’s other 8-Man game, Chinook (1-2, 1-1) roughed up Harlem (1-3, 1-2) 58-26.

6-Man

• Custer-Hysham-Melstone 87, Bridger 45: Layne Duncan threw for a school-record nine touchdowns – all by the middle of the third quarter – as the Rebels won a shootout with the Scouts. Duncan also ran for a score. Custer-Hysham-Melstone led 59-29 at halftime and had 73 points entering the final 10 minutes.

• No. 4 Harlowton-Ryegate-Judith Gap 56, No. 3 Roy-Winifred 20: Bergen Mysse scored five times – four in the first half — and Gabe Dill tossed three TD passes as the Engineers blistered the Outlaws in a matchup of ranked teams. Dill’s passes went to Landon Martin, Angus Glennie and Mysse. Glennie’s evening included an interception return of 24 yards for a score.

• No. 10 Shields Valley 46, Reed Point-Rapelje 0: Ian Danielson rushed for four touchdowns and caught a fifth quarter QB Robbie Anderson as the Rebels remained undefeated by pounding the Renegades. Shields Valley raced to a 24-0 lead after one quarter and coasted from there.

• Denton-Geyser-Stanford-Geraldine 44, Hobson-Moore 22: Tyce Smith and Axel Becker connected for four touchdown passes for the Bearcats (3-1, 1-0), who led 30-8 at halftime and cruised from there. Smith and Becker had scoring passes of 10, 17, 60 and 26 yards, and Smith also had a 9-yard rushing score. Kaleb Morris scored Hobson-Moore’s (2-2, 0-2) first TD and Jackson Swanz had a 21-yard TD pass.

Editor’s Note: To have games included here, submit scores and scoring details to 406mtsports.myteamscoop.com.

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Montana

Montana group welcomes South Dakotans seeking abortion, reproductive care

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

Montana group welcomes South Dakotans seeking abortion, reproductive care

A Montana-based abortion rights group is reaching out to neighboring states announcing abortion and contraception are legal and available there.

South Dakota has a near total abortion ban, which extends to pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Health care professionals say the state’s current abortion exception is unclear.

“Minnesota and Colorado are being so inundated with volume from other states that they might have wait times,” said Nicole Smith, executive director of Montanans for Choice.

Smith said the number of South Dakota women travelling to Montana is quite small. That’s why the group is raising awareness that the state is an option to procure the procedure, which includes a billboard campaign that welcomes those seeking the procedure.

“In Montana, we can see people same day that they get here, pretty much,” Smith said. “We just want folks to know that we do have a lot of availability and if they don’t want to wait and they can get into Montana—we can probably see them pretty quickly.”

Since September last year, 280 South Dakotans travelled to Minnesota for an abortion and 170 travelled to Colorado for the procedure. That’s according to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health group.

The closest abortion facilities to South Dakota in Montana are located in Billings. Smith says clinics also offer abortion medication through telemedicine.

Smith said Montana’s constitution has strong health care privacy rights.

“We have almost unfettered access to abortion in Montana,” Smith added. “There’s no mandatory waiting periods. There’s no mandatory counselling. We have telehealth for medication abortion. We’re very grateful that our constitution has protected those rights—that doctors and providers are able to give best practice medicine to us without politicians interfering in that way.”

South Dakota voters are set to vote on whether to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution this November. Constitutional Amendment G grants South Dakota women access to abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy. It allows the state to restrict the procedure in the third trimester, with exceptions for health and life of the mother.

Planned Parenthood North Central States believe the measure will not “adequately reinstate” abortion access in the state. Abortion opponents call the measure extreme.

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Sheehy, PERC and the future of public lands conservation in Montana

Published

11 hours ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

Sheehy, PERC and the future of public lands conservation in Montana

A great recent article by Chris D’Angelo reports on the connection between Tim Sheehy, the Republican challenging Jon Tester for his senate seat, and PERC, the Bozeman-based Property and Environment Research Center that promotes what it calls “free market environmentalism.”

While Montanans might wonder about Sheehy’s background and policy positions given the shifting sands in his explanations, the fact that he was on the board of PERC is not in question — despite his failure to disclose that fact as required by Senate rules which his campaign says is an “omission” that’s being “amended.”

For those who have long been in the conservation, environmental, and public lands policy arena, PERC is a very well-known entity. As noted on its IRS 990 non-profit reporting form, the center is “dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights and partnerships” which “applies economic thinking to environmental problems.”

But to put it somewhat more simply, PERC believes that private land ownership results in better conservation of those lands under the theory — and it is a disputable theory — that if you own the land and resources, you take better care of it due to its investment value. This has long been their across the board approach to land, water, endangered species and resource extraction.

If one wanted to dispute that theory, it certainly wouldn’t be difficult to do, particularly in Montana where checking the list of Superfund sites left behind by private industries and owners bears indisputable evidence of the myth that private ownership means better conservation of those resources.

In fact, the theory falls on its face since, when “using economic thinking” the all-too-often result is to exploit the resources to maximize profit as quickly as possible. And again, this example is applicable across a wide spectrum of resources. In Montana, that can mean anything from degrading rangeland by putting more livestock on it than it can sustain to, as in Plum Creek’s sad history, leaving behind stumpfields filled with noxious weeds on their vast private — once public — land holdings.

None of this is particularly a mystery, yet PERC has sucked down enormous amounts of funding from anti-conservation sources for more than four decades as it tries mightily to put lipstick on the pig of the all-too-obvious results of runaway private lands resource extraction.

Running one of the most high-stakes senate campaigns in the nation, however, produces a lot of tap-dancing around the truth in an effort to convince voters that you’re for whatever position will garner the most votes come Election Day.

In that regard, both Sheehy and PERC are scuttling sideways in their positions. Given the overwhelming support for “keeping public lands in public hands” in Montana, PERC now claims it “firmly believes that public lands should stay in public hands. We do not advocate for nor support privatization or divestiture.”

Funny that, given its previous and very long-held position that private ownership of lands and waters is the key to conservation. Likewise, Sheehy’s position, “that “public lands must stay in public hands” is completely the opposite from the one he held only a year ago, and parrots PERC not only in its verbiage, but in its realization of which way public sentiment and the electoral winds are blowing.

Since what’s at stake is nothing less than the future of public lands in the Big Sky State, it behooves us to demand specific policy positions in writing from all candidates for public office — including the race for Montana’s Senate seat.

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Montana

Couple walking across the U.S. reach Montana

Published

18 hours ago

June 28, 2024

Press Room

Couple walking across the U.S. reach Montana

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — A couple from Missouri have a goal to walk through every state in the lower 48.

Paige and Torin – known by their social media handle “Walking America Couple” – are in leg three of a five-leg, cross-country journey.

They’ve already traversed through 21 states, and on Thursday, their journey brought them to just outside White Sulphur Springs.

“Even out here in the more rural open space, we still make a lot of friends on the side of the road. People often stop and ask what we’re doing, or stop to see if we need water or food,” says Paige.

Each leg takes the couple roughly six months to one year, though they take short breaks in-between. They’re also completing the entire journey with their dog Jak.

“I think he loves the adventure more than we do,” Paige adds.

Through rain, shine, snow, and severe weather warnings, the couple have not been deterred, their purpose and mission propelling them.

“We would like to set the example that you can find contentment under almost any circumstance,” says Torin. “I started out the journey an incredibly cynical person, and it was through these repeated interactions of kindness with people that I had otherwise written off in the past, that my perspective began to change dramatically,” he adds.

Now, their journey is helping to spread the same happiness they’ve discovered to those they encounter on their journeys.

“We hope to be the example that we’re, as humans, all more malleable than we think,” says Paige.

For more information, click here to visit their website.

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