‘This is Just Absolutely Awesome’

On one sideline, hundreds of orange-and-camouflage-clad students belted out cheers, stomped up and down and shouted across the turf at their rivals. On the other end, students dressed head-to-toe in white howled back as loudly as they could and tossed baby powder into the air to punctuate the night’s biggest moments.

The scene at Legends Stadium on Sept. 21, with well over 3,000 spectators jammed into a newly renovated facility, filling every seat and spilling onto the field when no more seats were left, was perhaps a bit more familiar to Flathead High School coach Kyle Samson, a Helena Capital graduate who grew up playing fierce crosstown games against Helena High. But for Grady Bennett, a Flathead grad and the only head football coach Glacier High School has ever known, nights like Friday were something he could only dream about as a kid, a sentiment he shared even after his team ended up on the wrong side of a heartbreaking 28-27 final score.

“This is just absolutely awesome,” Bennett said. “Growing up here my whole life, we never got to experience this, ever, and so to finally let our town experience this and our kids get to play in something like this, that’s pretty cool.”

While the rivalry has never been short on passion — some of it stemming from the decision of Bennett, then Flathead’s football coach, and others to take jobs at the new school in 2007 — and attention from fans, it has matured as it reaches its 12th season. Most students at the schools likely have no memory of a time when Kalispell had just one high school, and the Wolfpack now boast a group of alumni from which to draw a fan base.

Time has also injected a measure of competitiveness into a rivalry that had been largely one-sided. The 2018 crosstown game was the first one decided by less than 10 points, and from 2009-16 Glacier won eight straight matchups by an average of more than 27 points. Flathead, slowly building during Kyle Samson’s five years at the helm, finally broke through with a 31-19 win a year ago to snap the streak and give the Braves their fourth win in 12 tries, and this year’s squad looks like the best group the school has seen since Kalispell became a two-school town. The Braves are now 4-1 this season, while the Wolfpack are 1-4.

So when this year’s game came down to a gutsy two-point conversion attempt by Bennett and the Wolfpack with just over two minutes remaining, it boiled down 12 years of passion into a single play with city-wide bragging rights on the line.

“I just told our guys we’ve got to get one stop; we’ve got to get one play,” Samson said. “It’s kind of the epitome of a crosstown game that it comes down to that.”

For most of the players in the middle of the action, the annual crosstown football game will be the biggest sporting event they ever play in, and the emotion of the night was not lost on the teenagers smashing into each other in front of their friends and families.

“It’s indescribable,” Flathead senior quarterback Jaden MacNeil said after the game. “It’s so emotional, everyone’s playing so hard, everyone’s got their emotions and everyone just comes and balls out … (The crowd) was pretty awesome.”

“It’s always a great game,” Braves senior running back Blake Counts said. “Emotions are high, tempers are flaring, everyone’s going out there and playing to the best of their ability and it makes for a heck of a game.”

Counts was the star of this year’s contest, and he and his teammates lingered on the field for more than half an hour after the game, posing for photos, celebrating with classmates and soaking in the afterglow of a grueling victory. Counts carried the ball 38 times for 173 yards and scored the eventual game-winning touchdown on fourth down, even as the entire stadium knew the ball would end up in his hands.

“I was feeling great,” Counts said, still smiling after two hours of punishment. “I told coach to give me the ball (on fourth down). I was ready to go. I was hungry.”

Samson, who came away a loser in his first three crosstown games as Flathead’s head coach, lingered on the field, too, offering his own assessment of the biggest night on his town’s sports calendar.

“For the town of Kalispell, it’s a pretty fun night,” Samson said. “It’s awesome to be on the winning end of it as well.”

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