On your marks … set … The town of 25 titles hosts its first-ever state championship

It all started on a rugged dirt track in the heart of Kalispell.

The history of track and field in this town dates all the way back to the turn of the 20th Century. In 1907, the Flathead County team won its first state title in just the fourth year that a boys-only prep competition had been held.

Now after 102 years, Kalispell is home to 25 state championships and a rich history that grew from the dirt track at the heart of what is now Legends Stadium.

However, while it only took the town four years to capture a title, it took up until now for the seat of Flathead County to capture the meet itself.

But finally, with a weekend forecast of clear skies and enough sun to go around, Tracktown gets its tribute.

Starting today, roughly 900 competitors from a combined 60 Class AA and B schools, along with an expected crowd in upwards of 5,000, are stepping into Legends Stadium for the first-ever state championship in 59901.

"It's a big thing, we've hosted divisionals before but we've never had the opportunity to host a state track meet," said Flathead coach Bill Epperly, who has been there since the late '60's. "Hopefully we'll do a great job with it so we'll be able to get it back in future years."

On Saturday, former Flathead standout Mike Huggins will be inducted into the Montana High School Association Hall of Fame. Huggins was a standout athlete who graduated from FHS in 1960 and went on to play on the 1964 UCLA NCAA National Championship basketball team under John Wooden.

With a population of around 20,000, Kalispell was until recently a one-school town, with just Flathead. Thanks to a core group of devoted coaches with roughly 200 years of experience and a long list of legendary athletes, it's fair to say that Flathead High has been a track and field hotbed in the state of Montana.

While the boys team won the first title, it was the girls who made the initial splash. In 1969, girls were allowed to compete in Montana, and Kalispell's athletes wasted no time.

The Timberettes as they were called won the first three girls titles and started what became a dynastic run through four decades for Flathead High.

Since 1969, the girls team has won 18 state titles. At the same time, the boys team hit stride in the 90s and won six titles between 1995 through 2003.

That makes a total of 24 track state championships in 40 years for the Braves and Bravettes. Only one other town, Billings, can lay claim to such a feat. The three Class AA schools in Billings have combined for the same amount of total titles as Flathead in the last 40 years.

Flathead was split up in 2007 when Glacier High was created on the northwest side of town.

But track's beating heart was not broken. This season, the Glacier boys won the Western AA divisional while the girls team stuck on the heels of powerhouse Missoula Big Sky and finished second as a team.

Meanwhile, Flathead has begun to rebuild with a solid core of underclassmen, led by Tess Brenneman. Before even hitting the divisional meet, Brenneman qualified for state in five events thanks to the qualifying standards being experimented with this season.

In other words, the future is bright. But that's mainly because the past has been so influential.

The list is long of legendary Kalispell athletes with the likes of Zoe Nelson, Craig Galle, David Vidal. But there's a group of coaches who have devoted a majority of their lives to Kalispell track, and they're as much a part of the local lore as the athletes they trained.

Current Flathead boys coach and Butte native Dan Hodge landed in Kalispell in 1971 after a final tour of duty in Vietnam.

At the time, the boys head coach was Bill Epperly, who still coaches the Flathead jumpers, while the girls were coached by Neil Eliason.

Eliason, along with Joe McKay, had built up perhaps the state's most formidable girls program that included over 300 female athletes. Even before girls were added to high school track competitions in 1969, athletes from across Flathead Valley had already been practicing for years on the cinder track in Legends Stadium, which was called Rawson Field until earlier this decade.

"We had a lot of talent and it was really fun," McKay, who retired in 2001, recently recalled. "Lots of times when we'd go to meets, you actually had to put on a clinic."

In the early 1970s, Hodge became the boys head coach, and McKay became the girls coach. Around this time, they were joined by Paul Jorgensen, Jim Kola and several others. For instance, Glacier's current girls coach, Jerry Boschee, started in Kalispell as McKay's chosen replacement.

"I don't know what the average coaching life is of a coach that's out for a high school sport, but I don't think you're going to find too many more long-lived coaches than what we have here," said Kola, who coached hurdles at Flathead for 38 years before moving to Glacier.

Jorgensen, who has also coached the highly successful cross country team for just as long, said it didn't always feel like a tracktown.

"When I first started coaching track, (the teams' were a little bit bleak," Jorgensen said. "But as time went on we got better and better."

Jorgensen and others have also pointed out that strong community support and a middle school program called the Highlander Track Club have helped cement the sports' popular local status.

But what keeps someone coaching for over four decades? It can't simply be because of success, can it?

For Kola, being able to watch athletes work hard at improving is what will keep him coaching well past this, his 40th season.

"That's what track is all about, one step at a time, work hard, improve, work hard, improve. And finally, if you've got any ability at all, then you're going to be one of those guys at the state track meet," he said. "But what I like most is to coach 'sun dialers,' that's what I call them. Where you start with kids who have very little speed and very little athletic ability, but if they stick with it for four years, you can see that progress line. They're winners, I don't care whether they ever placed at the state track meet."

It's an understatement to say that Kalispell's coaches have had an important influence on generations of kids. When talking with many of the "old-timers," as the coaches often refer to themselves, it becomes apparent that coaching has been more than a job for them.

Take Hodge, who could be seen working from early morning well into twilight prepping for this weekend's meet.

That's how a dirt track turned into a place of legends.

"They take pride in this because they have invested hours in all this," Hodge said of his fellow coaches recently while taking a short break. "We've spent a lifetime down here."

A History of Success

The former one-school town of Kalispell has a rich history of high school track and field success dating all the way back to the early 20th century.

Flathead High School

Track state championships

Girls (18) - 1969, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2005

Boys (7) - 1907, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

Current FHS state record holders

Girls

3200 - 10:26.18, Zoe Nelson, 2004, All class

Long jump - 18-11 1/4 (two records recognized), Lexie Miller, 1979, All class

Boys

100 - 10.84, Craig Galle, 1994, AA record

1600 - 4:13.29, David Vidal, 2001, All class

3200 - 9:16.18, Seth Watkins, 2001, AA record

Reporter Dillon Tabish can be reached at 758-4463, or by e-mail at dtabish@dailyinterlake.com