Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 11.2.16

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Blaine Carr gets some help with the door to the locker room; Connor Perry (44) brings down Nathanial Pedersen; Savage Heat players celebrate after the game.
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SAVAGE HEAT
worth two. Field goals, which are few and far between, are worth four points.
All together, this creates an action- packed, high-scoring atmosphere that often ends with a nal score more resem- bling a basketball game than any gridiron contest.
In six-man football, Hot Springs has developed into a dynasty in only a few years. This year’s team has outscored opponents 679-32. Last weekend, the Savage Heat defeated North Star 66-0. It snapped a ve-game streak of scor- ing more than 70 points. It was the sixth defensive shutout and advanced the Heat to another home playo game, this Satur- day at 1 p.m. against Bainville.
The dominating nature of this squad harkens back to the 2012 team, which went undefeated and won the school’s rst state championship in a 77-0 rout.
The 2012 win was a watershed moment for a rebuilt program on the rise.
For decades, Hot Springs frequently su ered losing seasons and even had to cancel the season for a couple years in the 1980s and 1990s because there were not enough players to eld a team.
In 2001, the school co-oped with Plains, but the team mostly played and practiced down the road away from Hot Springs, which hampered the town’s col- lective spirit surrounding the program.
In 2011, the school made a bold decision to break away from the successful Plains team and eld its own six-man team. Jim Lawson, a Hot Springs graduate and local rancher who served as an assistant on the co-op team, took over as head coach and began building a new program.
“A lot of us who stayed close to home and saw it struggle for several years
thought the co-op was a really good thing because the team was succeeding,” Law- son said. “When we broke away, the ques- tion was, ‘Are we going to have enough players to even have a team?’”
A year later, Hot Springs was hoisting the championship trophy, and ve years later, it’s a perennial playo contender with a community full of fans. Since 2011,
Hot Springs has a record of 52-5. Since the championship season, the Savage Heat have gotten close to bringing more hardware home. Last year’s squad lost in the nal seconds of the semi nal round to Box Elder and the year before that the team fell in the quarter nals to Mon-Dak.
“Us local people who knew the history of the football program in Hot Springs questioned if it was a possibility to ever win a state title in football,” Lawson said. “When it happened it was really special. It’s hard to explain. It was something that you can really appreciate when you had seen the struggles we had gone through for many years.”
This latest squad features only ve players over 6-feet tall. The heaviest weighs 190 pounds. In place of the typi- cal bulkiness of most football teams, Hot Springs’ players resemble a track squad, speedy and agile.
Among this talented group is one of the all-time great Montana high school play- ers in Trevor Paro. He might also be the best example of Class C’s versatility and grit. At 5-foot-8, 175 pounds, Paro is the all-class touchdown leader for high school football, a feat he achieved last weekend in the 66-0 victory over North Star. Paro, the team’s running back, return spe- cialist and all-around defensive stand- out, now has 123 career touchdowns,
A sign supporting the Savage Heat is prominently displayed in the window of the Hot Springs Senior Citizen Center.
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NOVEMBER 2, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM