It’s always enjoyable to follow the career and personal path of Grizzly football players after they leave the fold of University of Montana football.
That surely was the case last month when I learned of the induction of a pair of former Grizzly receivers, along with their Grey Cup Champion teammates, into the Canadian Football League’s British Columbia Lions Hall of Fame.
Mike Trevathan of Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Matt Clark of Missoula had their share of success with the Grizzlies with “Trapper” and Clark playing together from 1987-1990 on Don Read teams that won 32 of 48 games, advancing to the semi-final round where they lost to Georgia Southern in 1989, after losing to Idaho in the opening round the previous year.
Trevathan had the 11th best season in Griz history in his senior year accumulating 1,008 yards, hauled in 135 balls (14th all-time) and still stands 14th on the career yardage list. His 7.19 average receptions per game in 1990 are second only to Joe Douglass.
Meanwhile Clark stands 20th on the all-time yardage list with 1,639 yards. He won the Pat Norwood Award as Montana’s most inspirational player in 1990, while Trevathan was the Terry Dillon Award winner that year as the outstanding receiver.
Their ties with the Grizzlies remain deep: Clark from a high school teaching and coaching job in Portland, and Trevathan from Monroe, Louisiana, where he is head of residence life at Louisiana-Monroe University. In addition to Missoula it was also in the Canadian Football League where they made a mark.
The 1994 Lion team finished in the middle of the West Division standings with an 11-6-1 mark, then defeated Edmonton and Calgary before upsetting South Division champion Baltimore with no time remaining on the clock to win the chipper.
Trevathan played seven years at B.C. for a while under the watchful eye of former Griz great Bob O’Billovich and caught 410 balls for 6,467 yards (15.0 average) and 46 touchdowns, and enjoyed a 1,000-yard season on the Grey Cup team.
He is still fourth on the career list, while Clark played six years and stands eighth with 336 catches for better than 5,000 yards and 25 TDs.
I had the privilege to broadcast some of Matt’s high school games and it’s hard to believe that was some 25 years ago. Through the many years these two guys have been out there in Internet land checking in on results, occasionally dropping a text to Gurns during a game or, like in Matt’s case, showing up at hoop games in Portland.
It’s really what makes Griz Nation what it is – after all, it’s once a Griz, always a Griz.