Billings Central Wins Class A Boys Soccer Title vs. Whitefish, Completes Perfect Season

BILLINGS — A total of 15 seasons’ worth of Billings Central boys soccer team players came and went from the program without touching the Montana high school soccer scene’s biggest prize.

The Rams’ girls counterparts did it plenty of times in that stretch, and later Saturday at Amend Park they secured their record-setting 11th Class A state championship all-time, making them the state’s standalone most successful soccer program ever. 

For all of that pedigree on the pitch for the girls team at Central, the boys, who entered this season with just one title all-time (2009), were often coming up empty-handed over the past decade-and-a-half. A 2023 state championship game loss to Whitefish on the Rams’ home turf was a particularly brutal blow.

Now, one year after anguish at Amend — against the same Bulldogs team and at the same venue — the Central boys team’s long wait is finally over.

The occasion and Hollywood-esque finish, just like the Rams’ spectacular season, was perfect.

Sawyer Guenthner scored a go-ahead goal in the second overtime period, completing a two-goal comeback for Central boys soccer team as it got revenge for title-game heartbreak from last season (and many cases of heartbreak before that) in a 3-2 triumph over Whitefish.

The Rams (15-0-0), stuck in the unfamiliar position of being two goals down in the first half, didn’t sweat under the pressure and pushed the Bulldogs (11-3-1) right back to score three unanswered goals, staying ice-cool in the chilly conditions at Amend.

Central’s choice to go for patience over panic paid off, and when Bowman Seitz delivered a free kick that found the sophomore Guenthner with 5:27 left in the second overtime to go ahead, 15 years of bad memories were erased in that one moment.

Not a bad achievement for Central coach Bilechi Sumaili to pull off in his first year in charge.

“The problem with that now is I set myself an expectation,” Sumaili, a former player at nearby Rocky Mountain College, joked. “So I’m going to have to be chasing goals for a while before I’ll be 15-0 again.

“Look at everybody, everybody’s excited. (It’s been) 15 years without a championship, so it means a lot. Means a lot to all the parents, means a lot to Central, means a lot to the community.”

The opening act in a state soccer title trifecta in The Magic City on Saturday (plus the Class A girls match and the Class AA boys match between Billings Senior and Billings West at Wendy’s Field at Daylis Stadium), the Rams came into the final as slight favorites on paper with their unblemished record and the fact that they downed the Bulldogs by a 2-1 margin on Aug. 31.

But just over 20 minutes into the match, Whitefish — wanting to prove that it still had the talent to run Class A despite graduating 12 seniors from a year ago — had Central in a two-goal hole.

An easy-to-spot handball off of a cross in the 18-yard box by the Rams at the 24:37 mark of the first half set Whitefish up at the penalty spot, where Kyler Jonson converted the spot kick as the Bulldogs drew first blood.

Jonson’s second PK, which came with the clock at 19:43, came after a call that was more controversial; Rams goalkeeper Logan Hutzenbiler was whistled for a foul on a collision while going for a loose ball in the box, despite objections that the ‘keeper got all ball when he went to the ground.

Cole Bland, a senior midfielder at Central who already had one title-match loss on his resume, then showed that he was determined not to go through another one.

Thirty-one seconds after Whitefish’s second goal, Bland rocketed a low shot that beat its goalie at his left post, cutting the Bulldogs’ lead to 2-1. And when the Rams got their own chance at the penalty spot after a Whitefish foul in the box with 26:49 to go, Bland stepped up and delivered the tying goal from 12 yards away.

“Cole Bland is the best leader on the team,” Guenthner said. “There was a little bit of worry because this whole year, we haven’t been down one goal ever, so we kind of had a little pause and a little sense of worry. But our coach brought us together and said, ‘We’re in this.’ … This is the result.”

Perhaps inspired by Bland’s will to lead Central back into it, Guenthner, tired legs and all, made sure that the Rams’ fight from two down wouldn’t be for naught.

With the match in the balance and both teams having good chances between Bland’s second and Guenthner’s winner, the latter player — all 5-foot-6 of him — rose up to deliver the biggest header of his life off of Seitz’s set piece with the threat of a penalty shootout looming.

It was hysterics for Central, which took its first lead of the match with the goal, but devastation for Whitefish.

“They came out and gave it their all, they left everything on the pitch,” first-year Bulldogs coach Eric Sawtelle said. “It’s just that’s how the games go sometimes, is you don’t get the outcome that you work so hard for. … We’ll be back next year. This is going to fuel us, make us hungry.”

Five more tense minutes followed as Whitefish scrambled for an equalizer, but when the Rams held firm and the final whistle confirmed their title, Sumaili and the rest of the team immediately embraced each other in a scene of smiles and dogpiles.

It was a moment 15 years in the making for Central boys. In holding the first-place trophy aloft, another piece of hardware in the school’s decorated soccer history was added to the tally.

Only this time around, the Rams’ boys squad finally had a title it could call its own again.

“The whole mantra throughout the season (was that) we just win,” Sumaili said. “There’s no fun in losing. … Thank God they responded and we went out there and did our job. Brilliant work from these guys, brilliant work. I’m proud of them, all of them.”

Email Briar Napier at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter/X at @BriarNapier.