George Ferguson Column: I choose to remember the good times of the 2014 season

It will be hard for the Montana State University-Northern Lights, players and coaches, to forget about the last three weeks. It will be tough for them to shrug off the sting of back-to-back home defeats to Carroll College and UM-Western.

How could it not be? After all, football players and coaches are very prideful, and there’s no doubt the Lights’ pride was certainly bruised after Saturday’s 60-15 loss at the hands of the UM-Western Bulldogs.

However, as the Lights walked out of Blue Pony Stadium for the last time Saturday, not to be seen again in Havre until September of 2015, I started thinking about how I’m going to remember the 2014 team. And I certainly will choose not to remember them as the team that was pummeled by the Bulldogs Saturday afternoon.

Instead, I’m going to remember the good things I saw in the Lights this fall in Blue Pony Stadium, on the practice field and away from the field all together.

I’m going to remember the Lights, players and coaches, as the team that stuck together, through adversity that was unfairly placed upon them before the season even got started. I am, instead, going to remember a Lights team that took a stand, for their head coach Mark Samson, as well as for their current coaches and for each other.

When thinking back on the season, even with one game at Rocky Mountain College still to come, I’m going to remember a dominating performance over the Dickinson State Blue Hawks in the home opener. That win speaks volumes to me because Dickinson State is now 6-4 in the new North Star Athletic Association.

I’m going to remember Zach McKinley tearing up the turf at Blue Pony Stadium, in a record-setting season where not even the mighty Carroll College Saints could slow him down. I’m going to remember Trevor Baum becoming the best receiver in the Frontier, even though he hadn’t played the position since high school. I’m going to look back and think about what an amazing playmaker Jake Messerly is.

Instead of dwelling on what didn’t happen, I’m going to choose to remember how well Travis Dean played in his last season on what has been a roller coaster journey with the Lights. I’m going to think about Tyler Craig, Hunter Chandler, Butch Hyder, Kami Kanehailua, Patrick Barnett, Will DeVos, and a much-maligned Northern defense playing hungry and passionate no matter the score.

When I look back on 2014, I’m not going to think about the losses to Carroll and Western, instead, I’m going to remember one of the most dramatic games of the Frontier season, when the Lights stormed back to beat Montana Tech in Blue Pony Stadium.

Instead of looking at all the negatives, I’m going to look back and realize all of the work that Jake Eldridge, Scotty Leeds and the rest of an undermanned Northern staff put into this season, a season that got turned upside down in the first few days of fall camp.

No, I have the luxury of having a selective memory, and instead of thinking about the hard times that Northern has endured this season, I’m going to think about how bonded this team was, how emotional and passionate this team was, and how much, and how well this team represented Northern and the community.

Call me a homer if you want, but, even in despair, I choose to find the good, and I think, and I’m going to remember plenty of good things about this Northern team. In fact, this Northern team gave me plenty of great and lasting memories, and I hope MSU-N fans feel the same.

After the Lights play Rocky Saturday in Billings, the season will be over, and the future is certainly uncertain. And I won’t even pretend to predict what 2015 is going to be like for the Northern football program.

So, for now, I’m just going to look back, and when I do look back, I’m going to remember this season or all the good I saw, I’m going to remember this season as a season in which a football team took adversity and faced it head on. It’s a season that the Lights didn’t give up on, and no matter what the scoreboard said at the end of each game, or what the final Frontier Conference standings say, it’s a season with plenty of good, and for me, the good easily outweighs the bad.