Stepping out of the shadows

After two tough seasons, Glacier's Shay Smithwick-Hann is touted as the top high school QB in Montana

By DILLON TABISH/The Daily Inter Lake

The past does not always illuminate the present, but in the case of Glacier senior Shay Smithwick-Hann, it does.

Go back two years. Under the Friday night lights at Legends Stadium, Smithwick-Hann and the rest of the Glacier Wolfpack are dragging themselves into the locker room at halftime.

It's the first football game in school history, Aug. 25, 2007, against Butte, and it has started off about as rough as possible. The Bulldogs scored on five of their first six possessions, and after two quarters the scoreboard read Butte 40, Glacier 0.

Walking off the field, Glacier head coach Grady Bennett doesn't need to look at the score. He knows the reality. He knows his team of all-underclassmen has the deck stacked against them. In a league of established varsity programs, an upstart team is undersized, overmatched and can only hope for something - anything - to build on.

But in that situation, words of encouragement will only go so far.

Bennett needed more than words.

So, it's then, at halftime of that first game, that coach pulls aside his 16-year-old quarterback, Smithwick-Hann, and tells him this:

"'Shay,'" he says. "'I can't go to the team and say Hey, you guys are going to be beat by 40-0 at every half. You keep working hard and make the kids believe.

"'But Shay,'" he says, "'it's going to be rough. It's going to be a long year.'"

In the final minutes of the next quarter, the Wolfpack offense comes to life. Near Butte's end zone, Smithwick-Hann takes a snap and in a moment's notice, scrambles out left into open ground. With a wall of defenders in his way, he tucks the ball into his pads and barrels forward towards the goal line into a head-on collision.

Touchdown, Glacier.

The score sat at 40-7 from there on out. Afterward, Smithwick-Hann would say of that landmark touchdown, "It hurt, actually. I got hit pretty good, but it's fun to be part of history."

History continues to be made. This season, Smithwick-Hann is arguably the best quarterback in the state, and the Wolfpack, led by a team of tight-knit seniors who survived the doldrums of the last two years, is being regarded as a top-five team in Class AA.

A team is only as good as its leader, and Smithwick-Hann is a leader in every sense of the word. But the 18-year-old senior is quick to point out that football is not a one-man show, especially with this Glacier squad.

Both Smithwick-Hann and Bennett credit this year's No. 1 team strength as being unity.

And what else could it be considering what the group went through - a winless first season with games like the 63-0 loss to Helena Capital and with more lumps the following season?

"This senior class, they have never wavered, they have never quit," Bennett said. "Even after Capital beats us 63-0, the next week they came to practice ready to go and ready to get better. I couldn't believe it, I just couldn't believe it."

For Smithwick-Hann, giving football up and focusing on basketball could have happened, and success would have still followed. Last season, he helped lead the Glacier basketball team to the state tournament as the team's second-leading scorer.

But in sports, his heart beats for football and an embarrassing defeat or teeth-grinding tackle has not been able to stop that.

"In football you need all 11 guys working together," Smithwick-Hann said. "And I think coming into the mornings and working out three times a week, I think you just do that because all the guys around you want to do it. And they want to be successful and you want to be successful, for the person on your right and the person on your left, and they feel the same way about you. So I think that's what kept our class still going after those two rough years."

Despite winning only two games in his high school career, the quarterback has still managed to put up remarkable numbers and grab the attention of Division I programs from across the region.

Standing at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds, Smithwick-Hann is coming into the season as the top-returning passer. Last season, on a 2-8 team, Smithwick-Hann threw for 2,340 yards and 22 touchdowns, second in the state only to Flathead standout and current Arizona State prospect Brock Osweiler, who was a mentor of sorts to Smithwick-Hann for a year.

"I think he's the top quarterback in the state this year," Bennett said. "I don't know what every other program has necessarily but I really do think he's the top quarterback in the state this year. Not to put any pressure on him, I just think that's where he's at."

"We're excited," said Smithwick-Hann, who plans on playing college football next fall. "We're expecting to be very successful, but like I said, it all starts with that first win. You gotta build from there and that's what we're going with."

Regarding his current standing as another great Kalispell quarterback, Smithwick-Hann credits his coach and mentor, who entrusted him with confidence that first game.

"All my success goes to him," Smithwick-Hann said of Bennett. "He's done a good job with the program. He's a good guy to be around."

"I made the joke last year but it's not really a joke," Bennett said. "I've spent more time with Shay, especially in the fall the last four years, than I see my wife … I told Shay when the season started, every day is special for me, but it's also a little sad because I'm one day closer to saying good-bye to the kid, which is gonna tear me up."

The past does not always tell something about the present, but it does for Smithwick-Hann, Bennett and the Glacier Wolfpack.

Like the first touchdown in Glacier history, Smithwick-Hann earned it the hard way.