Getting ready for the big time

By JORDAN DAWSON / Bigfork Eagle

With school finally back in session, Bigfork Middle School is also getting back into fall sports. About 55 kids have turned out for the three fall sports; football, volleyball and cross country.

The football team has about 30 seventh and eighth graders on it this year. The boys mostly play as one team because there are not enough players to field separate teams for each grade, but there are three games that just seventh grade boys will play. They compete against teams from Whitefish, Somers, Eureka, Ronan, Polson, Evergreen and Kalispell.

BMS head football coach Chad Oster said he has been working with the boys on drills and basic skills at the team's practices, which take place every weekday after school at the high school football field.

"We are trying to run the same system as the high school so they have all the same terminology and similar basic plays," Oster said. "We run a toned down version of the high school offense."

Most of the players have some playing experience, either on the Little Guy team or as seventh graders.

"The eighth graders are getting the plays down," Oster said. "They knew them from last year. They're getting the blocking down really well. We may have the seventh graders try something a little different with the blocking."

The BMS volleyball team has 20 girls on it; six eighth graders and 14 seventh graders. This gives them almost enough players to have separate seventh and eighth grade teams, but a couple of seventh graders will play during eighth grade games to allow for players to rotate out. Four of the eighth graders played last year on the seventh-eighth team and seven of the seventh graders played on last year's sixth grade team.

"I have a lot of girls that have never played," said BMS head volleyball coach Stormy Taylor. "So we're really working on getting those serves over the net. Right now there's a big difference between those that have played and those that have not. The girls that have played can get it over the net. Not always consistently. Serving is my biggest concern."

Taylor is coaching in Bigfork for the first time. She played volleyball for Ronan High School and previously coached at Stillwater Christian High School for three years.

"The girls have been really good," Taylor said. "They work really hard."

Taylor has been in contact with high school coach Yvonne Peck in order to create a similar program at the middle school. Taylor is teaching the middle school players skills like being quick to the pass and using their feet rather than reaching for the ball, which are playing techniques that Peck emphasizes at the high school.

"I want to send them up to the high school prepared," Taylor said. "If they can go up to coach Peck with the proper technique, then she can take them from there. Also, that way she's not having to break bad habits."

The middle school cross country team has four runners on it. Three girls and one boy. Chelsey Olson, an eighth grader, is on the team for her third year. Melle Hubbard, a seventh grader, and Makena Morley, a sixth grader, are on the team for the first time. Mac Paine, the lone boy, is also in the sixth grade, and new to the team as well. Paine splits his time between cross country and the sixth grade Bigfork Little Guy football team.

The BMS cross country program is extremely similar to the high school program. They even practice with the high school team and are coached by the same coach, Sue Loeffler. Their meet schedule is nearly identical, except for the divisonal meet. The middle school runners compete on a course that is one-and-a-half or two miles, rather than the three-mile course that the high school athletes run on. They work out together, but their program is slightly modified so it is not as intense as the high school runners.

"The high school kids are great role models for these young ones," Loeffler said. "They all get along really well."

The advantage to having the BMS and BHS cross country teams so close knit is two-fold. The younger kids become better runners as they are challenged by the older kids, and Loeffler is able to get to know the athletes' personalities and what they are capable of, as well as how to best motivate them and push them to become better runners.

"They are doing really well," Loeffler said of the BMS runners who competed in their first meet on Saturday in Kalispell.

Against 78 runners, Morley took ninth with a time of 10:54, Olson was 21st at 11:44 and Hubbard placed 45th with 12:35. Paine did not run in this meet because of a football commitment.