Ellington

Welcome back to the Interlake Sports. Now I'm Josh Dugan, and thank you, as always, for taking the time to check out the show. Had a little two week hiatus, so we're back in action. You have an action packed show to get back in the swing of things. We'll start out our winter sports update. A few of those left wrestling's wrapped up.

Swimming's wrapped up. We're going to get to that state tournament action for wrestling. State swim meet and of course basketball's kind of reaching that postseason time of the year. So we'll get to a little bit of prep basketball action as we gear up for the playoffs coming up soon. As always. Want to talk a little Bridgeton Cats football.

Because in college football nowadays the news never stops flowing. And we have some transfer portal news for both our Montana colleges and then a couple little pieces of recruiting news about some local athletes who committed to, play college sports the next level, and where they announced, we'll be going over all that stuff before we dive in all the action.

Quick reminder today's episode is brought to you by Nomad for the fly. It's best manufacturer. Nomad is a longtime supporter of our local community and sports team, celebrating 20 years of building great careers and mission focused custom vehicles. Nomad, a Montana based company making a global impact. All right. Thank you, as always to our friends at Nomad. For more info, go to Nomad geeks.com.

That's Nomad geeks.com for more information. All right, let's dive into that winter sports update, starting with some state tournament action. Like I said, wrestling and swimming wrapped up over the weekend. We'll start out with wrestling that went down in Billings over the weekend, and the Flathead Braves had three wrestlers take home state championships, and the Glacier Wolfpack had two individual champs of their own.

So a strong performance from our Valley teams out in Billings, Flathead, Sawyer, troop took home state champ honors. Heavyweight and honors Thompson earned the state title at 205. The duo finished the year 90 and oh 90 wins, zero losses. That is quite the accomplishment for those two on the girls side. Flatheads Bell Downing earned state title honors at 120.

That's what the Glacier Boys Nikola calls took home state title honors at 152 and career end of the state championship at 114 for the Glacier Girls as a team, Flathead landed in second place on the boys side and the girls finished seventh. The Wolfpack, meanwhile, landed in seventh place in Double-A, and the girls ended up in 12th overall.

Big shout out to all of our Valley wrestlers who competed at the state wrestling tournament. I would say on the show one of the hardest sports, the amount of work that goes into it in practice and conditioning is. I played a lot of sports, did wrestling for about a month, and that's probably the toughest sport out of them all as far as conditioning goes and just hard work.

I know I've heard a lot of things about hockey too. You get all the gear on, you get going. I played football, played baseball. Nothing like those wrestling conditioning practices. Quite the things. So overall, big shout out to all of our local wrestlers. The state swim meet took place in Great Falls over the weekend in the glacier Wolfpack.

Boys and girls each shattered school records in the medley relay. Maggie Dean and a Vaughn block, Madeline McGehee and Olivia Gibbons combined to break the year old record on the girls side in the boys relay was composed Excuse Me of Jud Flake, Ed McNeal, Isaac Kime, and Jack Melnick. The quartet broke a school record that had lasted over a decade in the medley relay.

In total, the Wolfpack girls finish of fourth place. The boys landed in eighth place in the class A and B ranks. The White Cross Girls were fourth with 41 points, and the Columbia Falls Bobcats finished seventh. On the girls side, while the C Falls Boys were third and the Whitefish Boys were fourth. Kudos to all of our local athletes who compete in swimming, another sport where the training is extremely hard.

You get out. It's like wrestling kind of simply you get out there. You might only compete for a couple of minutes, but all the training that goes into it is excruciating. A lot of hard work and one of the best workouts. Swimming. So you can't go wrong there. If you're looking to do something new at the gym, go strong a couple laps.

That'll get you going. All right, next up, some prep basketball action took place in town, starting with Glacier, who split their Friday set with Butte, with the Glacier Girls picking up a 5448 when Reese Ramey led the way with 19 points. The Glacier Boys, meanwhile, fell to Butte 71 to 60. Cohen Costello had a career high 29 points in the loss to go 12 rebounds for the Wolfpack.

Had a double double strong play from Costello and Hudson Loukia Butte. He had 32 on that one, one of the best underclassmen in the state. He was a freshman last year and he was born on. I watch some at Western Double-A Tournament Town now as a sophomore. No surprise seeing putting up numbers like that. Flathead, meanwhile, dropped both of their games Saturday.

They had a doubleheader with the Bulldog Girls, took home a 4231 win over the Bravehearts. Kennedy Moore finished with a team high nine points to go with 12 rebounds, and on the boys side, the Bulldogs held off a Flathead comeback effort to win 70 to 62. Lyric Ursuline led the way for flying with a strong performance, 28 points and 12 rebounds in the loss.

Under that local recruiting news I mentioned, it's always a fun time of year seeing where our local athletes are going to be playing at the next level. Here we go. Starting now. Track and field where Glacier's Evan Barnes announced his commitment to the University of Montana, Barnes will be one of the top returning hurdlers in the state this spring, and won't have to travel far down highway 93 to Missoula to keep his track and field journey going.

Kudos to Barnes joining Barnes on the track and field team. Also going to be making that trek down the 93 flights. Brody storms barrier three. Sport athlete for the Braves. He finished second in state last spring and triple jumps. And it looks like the Flathead and Glacier products will be teaming up on the track next season. So from crosstown rivals to teammates, gotta love that.

That's what sports are all about. Exciting, exciting stuff. No doubt about it. Kudos to both athletes. Onto the football scene. Some big recruitment news where Glacier Offensive lineman Henry Sellers announced his commitment to play football to FBS level for Nevada. According to the football recruiting website, two for seven sports sellers is a three star prospect. Sellers will go from a member of the Glacier Wolfpack to a member of the Nevada Wolf pack.

So we're going to keep the theme going as the schools do. Share that mascot. Sellers had interest from Montana State as well as Army, where former high school teammate Jake Ryan. Dina currently plays fullback, but ultimately sellers chose Nevada and there is a Montana connection built in with Montana. Former Montana State coach Jeff Choate taking over the job at Nevada this offseason, so got to wonder if that came into play in the recruiting process.

Overall, big congrats to sellers on the opportunity to play football at the FBS level. Nevada should be a fun team on the rise. They've had some really down seasons the last couple years, but Jeff Choate is a name that you people are expecting him to really rebuild out there and get them back on track. All right, let's get to our prep.

Excuse me. Let's wrap up our prep sports action. Excuse me. What? This week's poster Player of the week, generously sponsored by your friends at Clark Auto Group here in Kalispell, featuring three local stores Clark Nissan, Clark Honda and Mount Auto marine Hall of the 2999 oil change on the friendly staff in town, don't forget, every Sunday you can see Clark Auto Groups four page special special insert in the daily Interlake every Sunday for the latest deals events in the Employee spotlight of the week.

All right, since we were away for two weeks, we have two poster players of the week. We're going to make up some ground start. Now it's Blazers coach Costello who we already mentioned spending steady as they come for the Wolfpack basketball team and the football team the last few seasons is a go to score and elite rebounder. Oregon starts as a flat out workhorse as shown by the 29 point, 12 rebound Double-Double we mentioned earlier.

One of those guys. We were joking last year, me and Fritz, neighbor of the Daily, and they're like, it's kind of like the Dennis Rodman of the Valley just outworked this competition. A beast on the offensive boards. Just one of those guys who makes his presence felt. And as the class double a postseason is coming up in a couple weeks, look for Alex Costello's excuse me to make his presence felt, especially around the basket where he's tough to stop on the interior got hard to keep them off the glass and just ultimately a great score on the post.

Next up is fly. It's Jordan Griffin. The sophomore has had a strong start to his varsity career. He's the Braves second leading scorer right now behind leader of Ursuline who we also mentioned earlier. Griffin sits right outside the top ten scores in all of Western and looks to be a key part of the Braves basketball and football programs over the next few seasons.

I believe he got some action at running back this year on the football field. Play a little defense as well, so need to remember Jordan Griffin, who has an underclassman, is making an impact for the Braves basketball program. So that'll do it for this week's Poster Player of the week presented by Clark Auto Group. Thank you again. Our friends at Clark Auto Group here in Kalispell for the support.

Remember, you can stay up to date with the latest deals and events from Clark Auto Group by checking out their. For. Patients are in the Sunday edition of the Daily Interlake. All right, let's round this thing out a little. Grizz and Cats football transfer portal news. It feels like college football's the gift that keeps on giving. There's always something in the news with this sport nowadays.

It just never ends. The battle to be the best, especially here in the Treasure State. You know, it means a lot to the Bobcats and Grizzlies football program. So they're always looking to shake things up and add some new talent. We'll start out with the Bobcats, who did shake things up and add some great talent. We spoke earlier about how the Bobcats have been very quiet in the portal.

I was kind of surprised they added a nice tight end for Maine Roland Jones, but now they brought in 2020 Montana Gatorade Player of the year offensive lineman Dylan Rawlins. He went to Missoula Sentinel and then went on to BYU, and now he's at the portal and he'll be coming back to the Treasure State and following his father's footsteps, who played for the Bobcats in the 90s, Rawlins is a good get former Gatorade Player of the year in the state, and he was the top football player in the state.

Joining Rawlins via the portal are former Washington State The Alignment Alec actor who played Prep on Lewistown, Idaho, and joining him on the offensive line. Rawlins, that is will be some more as he put the last two seasons in FBS for North Texas. All great moves for the Bobcats. He lost some key players on the offensive and defensive lines to the portal.

So those are guys that are going to be tough to replace. But these players, these this trio should really help retool and based on the talent you know Montana State already has, it seems like they're going to be able to pick up where they left off. And bringing in guys like Ezekiel Ecker and the Montana product. Rawlins will really help solve for the Grizz.

They made a lot of big splashes early on in the portal, kind of the opposite of the Bobcats where they kind of really went after it. They brought in eight transfers right off the bat, and now they've added two more to kind of round out their transfer portal class as of now, starting with safety Keshawn Gordon, who earned solid playing time with the Fresno Bulldogs last year.

Gordon at 22 tackles and one sack. So should be a guy ready to come in and compete for a job from day one, played last year with new Griz quarterback Logan Fife will also be competing for the starting quarterback job. So although Fresno State took Montana Grizzlies connection, there is also at a particular point of time, Morrison, who played the last two years at the junior college level for the College of the Canyons and California, coach Houck's experience on special teams.

You know, he's always looking for good talent in the kicking room at depth to that group, so we'll keep an eye out on what kind of impact Morrison may have, or if he's in Guy, who's more of a project for a couple of years down the stretch. But, you know, Coach Houck's always looking for talent at that position.

Speaking of coach, how one last piece of college football news and all kind of round the show out, coach Houck actually signed a three year extension. This was about two weeks ago. Like I said, we've been gone for two weeks but signed a three year extension to stay on as the man running the show for the Grizzlies. Kind of like the is the winningest football coach in program history.

As the winningest coach in big Sky history. And after leading the Grizzlies to their first AFC East title appearance since 2009, extension was definitely well deserved, especially after he faced some real criticism early in the 2023 season. Really overcame that. Dug deep it all the way to the title game, rattle off like ten wins in a row. So excited to see what Coach Hawk does, especially with this new incoming recruiting class.

With so much good talent in the transfer portal and a lot of key players returning. So the Grays are in a position to succeed from day one next year, no doubt about that. And the Bobcats, with these moves they've been making, will likely be right there as well. On that note, that'll do it for this week's Interlake Sports now.

Thank you, as always to our friends at Nomad Geeks and Clark Auto Group for the support. Thank you, as always to everyone watching or listening at home. Thank you for taking the time to check out the show. I'm Josh Dugan and I'm out.

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