Polson football prepares for future after losing to C-Falls

The Polson Pirates did what they could to send their hard-working seniors out on a positive note but couldn’t stop one of the top-caliber teams in Class A in their 50-6 loss to Columbia Falls Friday night at Columbia Falls.

Pirates’ coach Pat Danley said he felt C-Falls, one of the favorites to possibly win the Class A MHSA state football playoffs and one of the top-ranked teams in MHSA, was “ready to go.”

“From the get-go, they were ready to go and we were not,” Danley said. “They were very good and we didn’t score until the end. It was 40-0 at half. We weren’t ready to go but obviously they were. When you play a good team like that, it’s a bad combination.”

Danley concluded his first-ever head coaching season after taking over for Scott Wilson, who had a 17-year tenure with Polson, and finished what would be considered a transition year with several young and talented players he hopes to cultivate in future seasons.

Danley inherited a team that lost several key starters from their 2016 campaign including four players that went onto play high-level collegiate football. Scott Wilson and Tanner Rensvold both signed to play for the University of Montana, Jonah Burke signed with Montana Tech, and Trevor Corley signed with NCAA Division II Minot State University.

In his first season to try to reload the team, Danley said they will have to make a lot more adjustments to compete in an even more competitive league because of 2017 reclassification, predominantly used for football.

“We have to get much more physical and generally our biggest complaint is we need to get more physical against a decent team,” Danley said. “We aren’t nearly as physical as Hamilton, C-Falls, Dillon and Browning. Those teams out manned us this year.”

Polson, who ended its season without a playoff bid, isn’t worried because of what they have coming back next season.

“We have pretty much all of our receivers, defensive backs, our quarterback and both of our inside linebackers coming back for next season,” Danley said. “There is certainly a nucleus that we can build around and if we put some work in over the summer in the off-season, hopefully we can get back to where we want to be.”

After 17 seasons as an assistant coach, Danley had his first-ever head coaching gig this season and he said he learned a lot in his first year.

“There are some things that I learned in terms of logistical stuff,” Danley said. “I like delegating and obviously all of my assistant coaches helped tremendously with the transition. I think we are going to work hard in the off-season as well as our players. I think we are going to get this turned around with a little bit of experience.”

Danley said he is going to put a lot of emphasis on off-season conditioning in order to match the intensity of some of his conference foes such as Columbia Falls and Dillon.

“We will hit some summer camps, we will go to some team camps and we will hopefully be able to build on that,” Danley said. “This part of the year is obviously a weird time. We are trying to look forward and thank the seniors for their four years of work in our program. We have to a lot of seniors that did a lot for our program over the years and even though their senior season didn’t turn out like they would have liked it to, the whole staff is very thankful for what they’ve done in the last four years. We will now move on and hope to get better next year.”

Danley said he will sit down with each member of his staff and players and find out what they can do to improve in 2018.

“We have to step up and do the things we need to do in order to be successful in the off-season,” Danley said.