Friday Night Lights: A Day in the Making

Playoff football is a special time in Montana, and with it we say goodbye to the Friday Night Lights. That’s because playoff football in Montana is played on Saturday afternoon’s — at least around these parts anyway.

This Saturday afternoon will be a particularly special day for the Hi-Line, as three playoff football games will be going at the same time, and they’ll be separated by small stretches of highway from Chinook to Chester and Havre to Box Elder.

But as special a day as Saturday will be for everyone who cares about football on the Hi-Line, it’s an especially important day in Box Elder. That’s because the Bears don’t have a lot of playoff history. In fact, the players on Box Elder’s team weren’t even close to being born the last time Box Elder played a playoff football game.

So, Saturday’s game against Jordan, inside tiny Box Elder High School Stadium, will be more than a game, it will be a celebration — a celebration of a special group of football players and coaches, who have done something very rare and very unique and have become a football powerhouse.

In my time covering sports for the Havre Daily News, Box Elder has dropped varsity football on two different occasions, and has suffered through many, many difficult seasons when the Bears were on the field, so just getting to the Six-Man playoffs is something everyone in Box Elder should be very proud of.

However, these Bears want much more than to just be a part of the playoffs — they want to win. The Box Elder seniors have already won a state championship in basketball, and they would love nothing more than to bring a football championship back to their proud fans.

And to think Box Elder could win the state title in four weeks isn’t a far-flung thought. The Bears were one point away from being undefeated this season, and, they are now on a quest to win three straight games, and to get another shot at North Division rival DGS, which would only happen in the state championship game Nov. 21.

Yes, this Box Elder team is that good. They are unstoppable on offense and they play fast and physical on defense, and they have the players and depth to make a serious run at a state championship.

And, winning in the postseason would do a lot for Box Elder and its football fans. But, it would resonate much farther than just Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, it would be monumental across the state of Montana.

Box Elder having a successful postseason would be something that all reservation football fans could take pride in. Success on the gridiron has just never come easy for reservation schools, and you have to go all the way back to the 1980s, to an Arlee squad that won one Class C state championship, and played in another state title game, in order to find a reservation school that reached the pinnacle of Montana high school football success.

But this Box Elder team is shattering that mold. They are exciting, super-talented and, they have great kids, who do things the right way. They run an innovative offense and they play very hard on defense. In other words, they are fun to watch, they play the game the right way, and they are really, really good.

And, they aren’t done.

That is what makes Saturday’s game in Box Elder so special and so exciting. This Box Elder team isn’t just dreaming of going all the way, they are fighting for it, and they’re good enough to do it. It starts with Saturday’s first-round game against Jordan, and something tells me, with how good these Bears are, they aren’t going into hibernation any time soon.