Bulldogs football lays groundwork for future success
The Mission High School Bulldogs concluded their season with a 34-30 loss to Flint Creek High School to cap their first-ever season as a member of the Class C, 8-man football team.
At the start of this season, the Bulldogs transitioned from Class B, 11-man to Class C, 8-man and were under the direction of a new head coach and 2017 Western Montana graduate Tyler Murray.
Mission had an opportunity to defeat one of the top-contending teams in Class C, 8-man, Flint Creek. The Titans, a team that came off a critical 46-28 victory over the Charlo Vikings to secure the No. 1 seed in the west in the playoffs, found themselves down by 16 points to the Bulldogs early in the game.
“Flint Creek is a really talented young bunch and I think they will contend for a state title this year and probably next year with the majority of their team being comprised of juniors and seniors,” Murray said. “We saw their freshman quarterback and he is a great player. We decided to take our seniors out after the first half and played our younger guys in the second half. It was really hard for us to do that from a competitive standpoint but in the long run, the experience against a sub-varsity team will benefit our younger players.”
Murray, who just concluded his first-ever season as a high school head coach, said he is “optimistic” about the foundation of his program’s future.
“We just finished with five seniors and we have four juniors that will be seniors next year,” Murray said. “Hopefully, we will get a couple of more players coming out to play next year than we had on the roster this year. We had 15 sophomores on our roster this year and about 10 freshmen. That sophomore class is very large and the juniors we have are also good players. I am excited about our freshman class coming through.”
Murray, who is trying to build the football program, said it helps for his players to see two of the top-caliber teams in Class C, 8-man this season. The Bulldogs played arguably one of the toughest schedules that any team played this season including playing Charlo and Flint Creek twice this season.
“It helps a bunch not just for our players but it also helped our coaches see what we are trying to get to,” Murray said. “Flint Creek and Charlo are teams that make deep runs into the playoffs and I told our kids all year we don’t want to be Charlo or Flint Creek. We want to be Mission and establish our own brand of 8-man football. We don’t want to be Charlo version 2.0. We want to be Mission and have a great program.”
The Bulldogs look to be on target for that with a strong sophomore class now getting ready for the 2018 season and beyond as the Murray continues to lay the groundwork to build the first championship-caliber program the Bulldogs had since the 1950s.