Friday Night Lights: These T-Birds can really soar

Like many high school football teams on the reservation, the Hays-Lodge Pole Thunderbirds have often been overlooked.

Football has never gotten the attention that basketball has and when wins didn’t come on the gridiron, it became even harder to keep the attention of both players and fans. Yet, HLP head coach Shawn Mount never gave up and before the season, he predicted that his team would get a win.

And last weekend in Fort Benton, the T-Birds made sure his prediction came true.

“The biggest thing for these guys has always been confidence,” Mount said. “Getting that first win is the most important thing, just to be able to know that they can do it.”

During the first two weeks of the 2016 season, the T-Birds, who just moved back to the Northern C Division of 8-Man football, opened some eyes. In their first game, they went toe-to-toe with Great Falls Central and even held the lead in the fourth quarter, before dropping the game by four points. Then, the very next week against Chester-Joplin-Inverness, HLP lost another close game, extending the losing streak to 39 games with Fort Benton next up on the schedule.

“That gave us confidence and made us even hungrier,” HLP senior Frank Runs Above said. “I think that showed that we could compete against any one of these teams and it made us want to win more.”

Against Fort Benton, the T-Birds jumped out to a 16-0 lead thanks to a touchdown run by Chance Main and a 55-yard touchdown pass from Shambo to Runs Above. However, the Longhorns battled back and at halftime the score was 22-14.

The script, seemed all too familiar to the Thunderbirds and entering the fourth quarter, the score was still the same. However, an 11-yard touchdown pass from Tyson to Jace Shambo and a 13-yard touchdown scamper by Main put the game on ice and gave the T-Birds a 36-14 victory, their first on a high-school football field in nearly six years.

“We were pumped and really excited,” Runs Above said. “We were pumped and excited for the rest of the season because we know that we can win against these teams.”

While Mount and Runs Above both agree that the T-Birds have what it takes to make a run at the playoffs, just getting the team back into the win column will do wonders for HLP football.

“I think that will do a lot for us,” Mount said. “We are getting more and more people supporting us and getting a win will only help get people even more excited about football around here.

“I remember us winning a couple of games when I was in middle school,” Runs Above said. “And now it’s cool that we got one in high school. Hopefully it will help turn Hays-Lodge Pole football around.”

Getting a win was important for the T-Birds, but in their minds, they are far from finished. Currently, the Northern C is a jumbled mess with three teams at 3-0, six at 1-2 and one at 0-3. HLP is right in the mix at 1-2 in the conference and with Centerville (1-2) set to come to Hays Saturday, the T-Birds have an opportunity to assert themselves in the playoff race.

A win over the Miners would not only get HLP to 2-2, it would put the T-Birds right into the thick of the race for the fourth spot and with Belt and Cascade, two conference heavyweights coming up the next two weeks, who knows what could happen.

After that, the T-Birds will close the season against Power-Dutton-Brady, Chinook and Simms, games that all seem winnable.

“I think we can make a run at the playoffs,” Runs Above said. “We really looked at what Box Elder did as an example and how good they were on the basketball floor and how good they got at football. We wanted to try and match what they did on the football field.”

The Bears of course, made the Class C Six-Man playoffs last year for the first time in decades and eventually made it all the way to the state championship game.

And while reaching the state championship game may seem far-fetched for the T-Birds, when you end a losing streak that spanned half a decade, suddenly, anything seems possible.