Blue Pony head man Ryan Gatch looks back on a big season, before looking forward

It has been a long time since football has been on the field, but with summer kicking off, many teams, including the Havre High football team, are usually putting in work for the summer training season in hopes of sharpening their skills to do well in the coming season.

And, the 2020 season is getting closer by the day, but with COVID-19 still at the forefront, there has not been much for the Blue Ponies to do.

In times like these, though, it is a journey to look back on the previous season and reflect. After all, the 2019 season was an exciting one for Havre, which ended the year with a 4-4 regular season record, a push to the quarterfinals in the postseason and a senior class that went out on a high note..

Havre High head coach Ryan Gatch reflected on the 2019 season, where a strong senior class and a well-rounded team put in a lot of hard work.

"We had a real good year," Gatch said. "We had a really fun group of seniors, especially since that was my first group of guys I had four years together with. They'd been through a lot of adversity and different challenges throughout their career here at Havre High, so it was a lot of fun to see them stay true to themselves and to the Blue Ponies to get the job done that they needed to. It was a lot of fun to compete really well in a lot of our games."

The Ponies had a strong push last season, but it started out rocky. On the road against Sidney, Havre fell in a close game 18-14 against the Eagles, which was not an ideal start, but the Ponies bounced back at home to thump the Glendive Red Devils 43-6 in their home opener at Blue Pony Stadium. Havre then picked up another win, this time on the road against the Hardin Bulldogs 35-12, earning a 2-1 record early in the season.

But then the Ponies fell to a 2-3 record after losing a pair of tough games to the Laurel Locomotives 43-7 at home and the eventual Class A state champs in the Miles City Cowboys 42-7 in Miles City. A forfeit win over the Livingston Rangers put Havre at 3-3, but then the Billings Central Rams handed the Ponies another tough loss on the road 42-22. At that point, things looked bleak when it came to a postseason appearance.

Despite that, Havre did not quit, as they still had a chance to host a home playoff game with a win over the Lewistown Golden Eagles at home. The Blue Ponies rocked the house that night, beating Lewistown 30-8 to secure a home playoff game against the same Eagles. That night, Mason Dionne rushed for 210 yards and put up two touchdowns, while Kellen Detrick and Reese Bulkley added a touchdown each. The season-closer against Lewistown was huge.

The playoff rematch against the Eagles was even closer than the first matchup in the regular season, but this time, the Havre defense went to work to push the Ponies to the quarterfinals, beating Lewistown 14-13 inside Blue Pony Stadium. That afternoon, Detrick played the biggest defensive game of his career, with a fumble-return touchdown and a safety, while Dionne scored the game-winning touchdown at the end of the game. Unfortunately, Havre would fall to Dillon in the quarterfinals 47-7, ending the magical season.

Gatch was proud of what his team accomplished in the 2019 season and he is happy to remember just how far the Ponies came that year.

"Anytime you make it to the quarterfinals and beat a team at home in the playoffs, you're doing really well," Gatch said. "Success was fun to watch our players have - and them go from a team that was not quite as confident in week one to pretty dang confident by the time we got to the end of the regular season against Lewistown at home. So I know it's a lot of fun to see those guys put that together. I know we played two games where we would've been really tough for anybody to beat in the state. That was fun to be able to see that we could get to that point and play really well at different times against top-level opponents. Now it's time to get to work and get over that hump, so we can find ways to compete with the top-half of the Eastern A. It'll be a lot of fun."

Often times, a turning point occurs in a season that can propel a team forward down the right path. Most would say that the turning point for Havre in 2019 was the regular season home-game against Lewistown that secured a home-game playoff rematch, but Gatch saw the turning point strike before the 2019 season even started.

"In 2018, they got confidence as the season went on and that they were going to be a pretty good football team," Gatch said. "Had a good group of juniors coming back and a lot of sophomores playing. My biggest thing with that is that we were expecting to do a lot more than we did in 2018. The players all felt that, too, so I think that was the big turning point was having success towards the end of the 2018 season and being able to take that work ethic over from the season into the winter and spring sports, where we had a lot of people participating in, and then into our summer things. The focus of 2019 was being able to have a really good season. It was a lot of fun to see that once we were able to gain some confidence and put a coupler things together for 2019."

Many players did well in the 2019 season, as well. Then senior quarterback Bulkley made a name for himself as an athlete who could work into a passing, run-option and even receiving game throughout the year, earning him the nickname, "Mr. Versatility." Former senior running back Dionne rushed for over 1,000 yards in his career that year and became a staple playmaker for the Ponies in 2019. Meanwhile, sophomore at-the-time Orion Thivierge made big plays as a receiver for Havre.

The Blue Pony defense was another strong point in 2019, too. Detrick became one of the most explosive defensive linemen in 2019, pressuring and sacking quarterbacks and wreaking havoc, while former senior defensive lineman Quinn Springer made major plays, including helping knock the ball out on the play that led Detrick to return it for a fumble-recovery touchdown against Lewistown. Other vaunted defensive players, like Joey Byrd put up two interceptions in one game to help the Ponies secure the home-playoff game. Orion Thivierge was one of many other players to have a big impact in 2019.

And even more athletes played a part in the making of the 2019 season, like former senior offensive lineman Kasee Henderson, who was hailed as one of the best o-linemen in the state in 2019, as well as earning All-State and All-Conference first team spots. Former senior offensive lineman Dexter Beck made a big impact, too, when it came to protecting the quarterback. In general, the Havre 2019 offensive line was a wall throughout the year.

There were a lot of big moments throughout the 2019 season, but Gatch saw the major highlight of the year happen after the season, when he got to watch his seniors take the next step forward in their lives.

"I loved watching those guys graduate," Gatch said. "It was a beautiful ceremony out at Blue Pony Stadium. A lot of the seniors that were on the team, obviously, they walked. It was really awesome to see our young people that did so many great things in the course of the year and sticking through the course of the year with the remote learning and everything to watch them graduate. That was really the big key highlight for me, watching those guys graduate. I got to be there and it was a spectacular demonstration put on by our administrative staff, Mr. Norman, Mr. Carlson and the whole team put that together. To watch our students be able to go across the stage out at Blue Pony Stadium was really special."

And now, the 2020 season is the next chapter waiting to be written in the history books. But, right now, COVID-19 is getting in the way of summer training and team activities for the Ponies, who have been itching to safely get back to work after being pushed into a remote learning and isolated phase toward the end of the 2019-2020 school year.

Gatch knows that the next step is to overcome the current hurdles of COVID-19 to move forward with the 2020 season.

"We want to be able to play really good football season," Gatch said. "We want everybody to be able to practice social distancing and keep COVID-19 down, that way we can have a football season in 2020. That's the biggest thing. When you go into remote learning for eight weeks, it's really challenging on the players. You can't get around it. We're really talking about working around it and getting in training for the football season."

On top of that, there are a lot of goals to accomplish in the future, which Havre hopes to rise to and above. The biggest thing that Gatch looks forward to in regard to the 2020 season is getting better at something that plagued the Ponies in 2019 - playing on the road.

"We want to play well on the road," Gatch said. "That's going to be the key factor. We got a home and away with Billings Central, so going on the road to them and then to Sidney, who we're playing for the fourth time in five years and we haven't been good enough to win over there. So when we look at this, we play with extreme confidence at home and we need to be able to keep that confidence going on those five-hour bus trips. No matter what challenges present to ourselves in going and playing a game, whether it's Glendive, Sidney, Billings Central or Laurel, defending state champs Miles City, we got a lot of anticipation to see things come together, especially in the next couple months. We look forward to competing at a high-level on the road. We got to play great football at home and on the road."

At the end of the day, the 2019 season proved just how far the Blue Ponies could go, saw many players stand out, built up the confidence that will keep growing with time and overall. It was just a strong, solid season for Havre. As the days go by, the Ponies aim to get back into the normality of summer training so that the 2020 football season will be even better than the last. With what Havre out forward in the 2019 season, there will be a lot to look forward to in the future of Blue Pony football.