The line that came together

Playing on the offensive line doesn't normally garner headlines or much attention from fans. But if you know football, then you know just how important a good offensive line can be when it comes to winning football games.

There are a number of reasons why the Havre High football team won the Central A Conference championship and is getting set to host a Class A quarterfinal playoff game at Blue Pony Stadium this Saturday, but one of the most important has been the development of an offensive line that, at the start of the season, was considered a little shaky.

"They really have improved," HHS head coach Mark Samson said. "I think coming into the year, we knew we didn't have a lot of kids with experience. And our offense is a little more complicated than what they were used to. But, they have worked to understand our scheme and have done a much better job as the season has gone on."

At the start of the season, Havre struggled to run the football and through the first few games, the Ponies were averaging less than 100 yards per game on the ground. But, a game against Sidney, in the fourth game of the season changed everything and since then, the offensive line has turned into a strength.

Havre still only managed to rush for barely more than 20 yards that night, but the offensive line did a solid job of protecting quarterback Dane Warp and ever since that 26-21 win, the hogs up front have played with more confidence and more of a purpose.

"The Sidney game showed us that we could do it," senior offensive tackle Thomas Keith said. "That really helped us believe that we could do this together and get something out of our offensive line."

Along with Keith, seven other players have seen significant time in the lineup on the offensive line for Havre including senior left tackle Travis Adams, Cole Keller, who is a senior that starts at center, as well as Jared Sienkowski and Chris Gabrielsen, who each start at guard. John Berg, Brock Smith and Austin Burnside have also seen action along the line this season and have each made valuable contributions.

"We have been a close group all year," Keller said. "But we really started to trust each other. It took us a while at the start of the year with the new system to get that down, but once we did, that helped a lot."

Entering the Sidney game, the Ponies were just 1-2 after dropping two of their first three games to start the season. Since that time, Havre has been on a roll, winning six consecutive games to close the season and finishing with a 4-0 record in Central A conference play.

The difference in terms of pass protection and production in the running game has been night and day since the win over Sidney. And after averaging just more than 60 yards on the ground through four games, the Ponies have upped their average to 166 rushing yards per game in their last five outings.

"It's important to our coaches that we are able to run the ball," Keith said. "That is one of our goals and it's something that we have worked really hard to be able to do."

This week, Havre will be challenged by another team that comes into the postseason on a hot streak as the Columbia Falls Wildcats will enter Saturday's game, riding a three-game winning streak. Columbia Falls finished the season with a 5-3 record but in their last two games, the defense has shown drastic improvement and surrendered a total of just 12 points.

And if the Ponies want to keep their winning ways going, they will need another productive outing from the offensive line, not only when it comes to running the football, but also when it comes to giving Warp enough time to look down the field for receivers such as Nate Rismon and Parker Filius.

"We need to prove our manliness," Gabrielsen said. "But we have a lot of confidence in each other. We have come a long way."

And with a forecast that is predicting a windy day Saturday, it's likely that the both teams will need to rely on their running games for success, something that might have been a problem early in the season for Havre, but not so much anymore, especially after a 327-yard rushing performance against Polson two weeks ago.

The bottom line is that to win championships, you need to get it done in the trenches. And even though there may have been doubts whether this Pony offensive line was good enough to win with back in August, those doubts have since been erased and the group, which calls itself a family, is eager to prove it again Saturday in the playoffs.

"We put our bodies on the line for each other every day," Burnside said. "And we give it all for each other in every game."

Havre makes its playoff debut Saturday when the Blue Ponies host Columbia Falls at 1 p.m. inside Blue Pony Stadium.