Buddy System

Anybody who is familiar with the game of golf knows the value of a great golfing buddy. It always gives you somebody to play with and compete with.

And within the town of Havre, you may not find two better golfing buddies then Jerod Boles and Jeff Miller.

For four years now, Miller and Boles, who are both seniors at Havre High School, have starred for the Blue Ponies on the links. Each player has earned Central A All-Conference honors four times and each were All-State for Havre a season ago.

But, the funny thing about these two is that, while they both excel on the golf course, golf never has been either's primary sport, or their favorite to participate in, which is what makes their long history of success even more uncanny. Most athletes are great at one sport or two. Boles and Miller played in a total of seven sports - and they are good in each and every one of them.

"We really push each other to be better," Miller said. "We put in a lot of work in the summer and basically we are always doing something. We usually get up and golf, then we would go to the tennis court and then to baseball practice. But I don't think either of us would be as good without having the other person to push you a little bit."

When it comes to sports, Boles and Miller are essentially inseparable. In addition to being members of the Pony golf team, they both play tennis at Havre High and for the Havre North Stars American Legion baseball team as well and not surprisingly, all the teams they are a part of seem to do well.

Last season, the boys tennis team, led by Miller's second-place finish, brought home a third-place trophy at the Class A state tournament and that came on the heels of the duo being part of yet another Central A team title, their third together in tennis.

Miller, whose three older brothers also played tennis at HHS, also has an individual state championship in tennis, which he won in 2013. And he said that while he likes golf, tennis is the sport in his family and the one that will always be his favorite.

"It just kind of comes from all of them (his brothers) and having them play with me all the time," Miller said of his affinity for tennis. "Getting to grow up around them, I got to see all the success that they had. Now, I am trying to be the best one out of all of us, so it's kind of a competition to see who the best one of the four of us is."

Just like tennis was Miller's first love instead of golf, Boles said his favorite sports growing up were always football and basketball.

"I grew up around basketball before I grew up around the other sports," Boles said. "I knew how to play going into middle school more than I did golf or football."

Now, basketball is the only sport that Boles and Miller don't play together, as Boles has spent the last two seasons as a member of the varsity basketball team at Havre High, while Miller no longer competes in any winter sports.

As a sophomore, Boles worked his way into the lineup and eventually became the Ponies' starting point guard. And now Havre has made it to the Class A state basketball tournament two years in a row and in the six games HHS has played at state in the last two years, Boles has started all of them.

However, like Miller with tennis, Boles has been drawn to golf by family, which makes sense because his father, Dave Boles is the head golf coach at Montana State University-Northern. And Boles credits him, as well as his mom, Tammie Boles for getting him into golf.

"Golf was something that my parents did a lot," Boles said. "And back when I was younger, I hung out with my parents a lot, so when they would go golfing, I would go with them."

But as the years moved on, Boles and Miller started to do a lot of their golfing together, which usually led to good, if not sometimes unusual results.

"When we go out there, we both want to win but it usually never happens because we always seem to end up shooting the exact same score," Boles said. "It's the weirdest thing ever, we almost do it every time."

"I think we just kind of feed of each other," Miller said. "We are competing against each other in a friendly way, but we still want to both come out on top."

Now, as the duo gets ready for their last high school tournament for the Ponies, which will take place this Friday and Saturday in Sidney at the Class A state tournament, there is just one goal left to achieve - win a state championship.

"That's the dream," Miller said. "I definitely think we have a chance to do it. It's going to be tough, but if we play really well it's possible."

But, even though their high school careers are winding down, there is still a possibility that the Boles-Miller duo continues into college golf, maybe even at Montana State University-Northern. And even though both players would rather play collegiate athletics in other sports, when it comes down to it, golf may be their best option.

"I want to play tennis, that is at the top of the priority but it's a lot harder to get into a tennis program," Miller said. "So I am kind of weighing that against what happened last season. But playing golf and going to Northern for at least two years is always an option, we have both kind of talked about it. Just depends on what happens this year and how tennis goes.

"We haven't really talked about it," Boles said referring to his dad and golfing at Northern. "Every time we talk about me going to college, we talk about going elsewhere, but he does always bring up how it would be cheaper to do my first couple of years here. And Jeff and I could definitely become two of the better players on that team."

For now, though, the Boles and Miller tandem has one more high school tournament left to play and there is little doubt it's the biggest of their golfing careers. So even though they both have promising futures ahead of them - for one more weekend on the links, they get to be nothing but golfing buddies and teammates, which, in their lives, has become par for the course.