The Man in the Room

Beau LaSalle was named the head coach of the Havre High wrestling team last March. However, his first practice was last week and his first tournament at the helm, is little more than a week away.

In some regards, LaSalle has to be the envy of high school wrestling coaches across the state of Montana. He landed one of the best jobs in the state. The Havre wrestling program is filled with talent, has an incredibly strong infrastructure all the way down to the youth level and it also has as good a support system as any in the state. Yet, that was built with the steady hand of Scott Filius, who constructed one of the most successful wrestling programs in the history of the Montana High School Association.

There was a reason why the Blue Ponies won 12 state championships during his tenure, including four-in-a-row on more than one occasion. The amount of success enjoyed by Havre wrestling under Filius was truly staggering and now that's he gone, LaSalle is also tasked with replacing him. And while that brings a lot of positives, anyone who knows anything about sports knows, following in the footsteps of a legend is never easy.

LaSalle, who assisted Filius for the last six years, also wrestled and won state championships under him, including an individual title his senior season. He also wrestled at MSU-Northern under the direction of Tyson Thivierge and twice wrestled at the NAIA National Tournament. All that experience and all those achievements have certainly prepared LaSalle for the task as Blue Pony head coach and it's hard to imagine someone more prepared than the former Havre alum to lead the program into the future.

Now, he just has to do it and with his first season right around the corner, the Havre Daily News sat down with the first-year head coach for a lengthy question and answer session.

HDN: What has it been like now that you are getting into the season and the daily routine of being the Havre wrestling coach?

LaSalle: "I guess it has just been business as usual. Not a whole lot has changed, except for there being more paperwork involved. As far as the day-to-day stuff, I have run quite a few practices and things like that at the junior high, so the day-to-day hasn't changed that much. Just more administrative stuff."

HDN: In terms of practice schedules and things like that, do you model much of that based on what you learned from Scott Filius and Tyson Thivierge?

LaSalle: "I took a little bit from both of them. You would be silly not to. You have two of the best coaches in the state to work with and you have to take a little bit of what they have done because they have had proven success. I try to put some of my own philosophies in there and go in the direction I want to take the program. Obviously, it wasn't going in a bad direction. It wasn't broke so we don't need to fix it, I just want to put my own spin on it."

HDN: What are some of the things that you are trying to implement?

LaSalle: "We have put a little more focus on our early-season conditioning this year than we have the past couple. Not that we didn't focus on it before, just something we are putting a greater emphasis on now. I think the philosophy of the program is still the same: hard work and effort. That is not changing at all. We are just trying to get every kid to buy in and put in the effort. In the past, we had great buy-in, but we just want to make sure that the younger kids and the kids that haven't wrestled buy into that mentality. We just want to work hard and give great effort and we believe the success will come with that. In the first few weeks, I haven't really taken my foot off the pedal and we really aren't going to until Tri-State, that is when we want to start peaking, at least that is the first tournament we want to peak for. We want to do well at our tournament and repeat at the (Mining City) duals, but our main focus in the first part of the year is the Tri-State."

HDN: Coach Filius was known for doing a lot of work in the offseason, how much of that did you do this year and how much do you plan on doing?

LaSalle: "We had a pretty good travel schedule during the spring and the fall and that is one of the main things that I have taken from Scott. You can't make up that offseason time. That is where I feel he was ahead of the game for quite a while. Guys have started to figure that out and have caught up, but the time he put into the offseason is one of the big things I have taken away from him."

HDN: What will it feel like when it's the Havre Invite and you take the mat as the head coach?

LaSalle: "I haven't really thought about it. That part of it really hasn't crossed my mind. I am more focused on what we are going to get done each day and doing what we have to in order to be prepared for the first meet. It will probably be a little different, just from the perspective of not having Scott there. I coached with him for a long time but we also became pretty good friends."

HDN: How much is Coach Filius going to be around? Has he been around yet this season?

LaSalle: "He's going to be around from time to time. We haven't had him in yet during this season but we have had him come in during the offseason."

HDN: What are your expectations for this season as a whole?

LaSalle: "I don't think the expectation has changed. The coaching staff and the faces might change a little bit, but the expectations of the program are going to be the same. You expect the kids to work hard and compete hard and with that comes a lot of success. If we can stick to working hard, competing hard and having fun while we are doing it, then the rest will follow. But the expectation, by the end of the year, is to be back on top. Looking down the road to the future, I think that is always going to be the expectation of the program. I think we hold ourselves to that expectation and the kids hold themselves to that expectation. We expect to compete hard and be back where we want to be, which is on top."

HDN: What do you guys have to do in order to get back on top?

LaSalle: "We have to be a little more hard-nosed than we were last year. I think anytime you are winning and you win that many times, you forget how hard it is to win and how hard you have to work to win because it was coming so consistently. A lot of the guys on the team last year, they didn't see the first couple of years what it took to win. It was a good wake-up call because maybe we weren't pushing as hard and letting the little things slide too much. I think when you are winning, it's sometimes easier to let those things slide, so we just have to get back to working hard and being hard-nosed. That's the tradition of our program. We have always been hard-nosed and we need to get back to that. We want to get back to that physical style of wrestling that we got away from a bit. Not that everybody did, but in general, we just didn't have the chip on our shoulder like we needed to."

HDN: Obviously, you will need to beat teams like Sidney to win the state championship, how do you go about catching them?

LaSalle: "I am not really focused on them. I am more focused on us and what we need to do to prepare. I think last year, they took it to us a couple different times. But I haven't really spent too much time thinking about them. We are just focused on getting better."

HDN: Did finishing second at state to Sidney help bring the hunger back to the program?

LaSalle: "Definitely. The kids are hungry and like I was talking about, they have that chip on their shoulder. They are kind of getting written off because you know, they got knocked off last year, so they have that chip back on their shoulder. They are hungry again and that is fun to see right now. It's fun to be in the room."

HDN: How important is it to you to keep the program at a high level and not see a drop-off after the retirement of Coach Filius?

LaSalle: "We always want to put our best team out there every time. Scott has done a great job of creating this culture in Havre and this program. It's a culture and a program from the little guys all the way up to the high school and we want that to continue and show no matter who the coach is, we are always going to be in the hunt for a title."