Glory of football softens summer’s end

The end of summer saddens.
With feet resting on a log and the body slouched in a lawn chair, protected from coming chills by a Seahawks sweatshirt, contemplation drifted easily to shore off the waves of Georgetown Lake.
The golden glimmers danced on the lake and a bald eagle circled overhead at Philipsburg Bay near the same shoreline area where a family of three moose entertained visitors the night before. Some of the curious viewers had ventured past the boundaries of common sense for a better look at the moose, but, thankfully, no incidents occurred.
We were missing football, our most soothing segue out of summer into colder weather, while we basked or wallowed in this contemplation at the beach. The botched call, they say, cost the Packers last week. Wasn’t a Packers’ score earlier set up by a similarly debatable judgment?
Yeah, I know. But they’re the Packers. Therefore, the real officials must answer all calls from here on out.
The thought then prevailing was that if the winless Saints somehow pulled a win out over the Green Bay untouchables, would the demand then be that MLB umpires be called into duty for next week’s schedule?
Wouldn’t be a surprise.
Neither is Butte High’s football performance anymore. The Bulldogs are for real.
Give Bozeman quarterback Connor Linebarger some nice compliments for his determined efforts against Butte High Friday night. He was filling in for injured starter Will Weyer and performed admirably.
Still, the 28-19 Bulldog victory over the fifth-ranked Hawks at Naranche Stadium was a show of sincere effort. Butte High linebacker Bo Taylor didn’t even relent on effort after being stripped of his gear because of a shoulder injury. He then paced the sidelines, shouting encouragement to his teammates and showed every indication that he’d jump back out onto the field in a second, if only the trainers would turn their heads.
It is a group of Bulldogs that wants to play. So, they all play hard.
Some stick-out moments from the game include quarterback Dallas Cook’s scoring pass to a wide-open Zach Bunney on an order by offensive coordinator Mike Schmidt that might stand as call-of-the-year to date, putting the Bulldogs ahead 21-19; Tyler Earls’ 14-yard sack of Linebarger that helped preserve the win; Cook’s scoring pass to Dalton Daum that saw the Butte High soph spin his way down the middle of the field, out of the grasps of three Hawks and into the end zone for the clinching TD; and a Cook quick kick that caught Bozeman by surprise and pinned the Hawks down at their own 3-yard line late in the game.
The Bulldog defense was good against a very athletic Bozeman team that sported nice size, good speed and enviable agility.
The Southwestern A Conference leaned with a little different slant this weekend. The locals and close-bys, Butte Central, Anaconda and Dillon, dominated the Bitterrooters, Stevensville, Corvallis and Hamilton. Some shakeup in the standings happened and everybody on this side of the Skalkaho remains in the playoff hunt.
It was a good bounce-back for the Maroons, who had to shake off succumbing to a late Anaconda rally the week prior. Stevensville had been the league pick to place runner-up to Dillon this fall. The Maroons waxed them on the road, 31-13, while Anaconda was blanking the Broncs in Hamilton 46-0.
Football will continue to be interesting and help ease us a little closer to the heater in coming weeks.