TERRY COLUMN: In for the long haul

Montana is a big state.

Huge, really.

Fourth largest by total area and spanning more than 147,000 square miles.

That makes for some epic road trips during the high school football playoffs.

This year’s goliath trek in the upper classes of the state belongs to Sidney, which beat Belgrade 28-20 last week in the first round of the Class A playoffs. The Eagles get the honor of making a 1,106-mile round trip along the full length of the Hi-Line and over the Continental Divide to and from Whitefish, a more than nine-hour haul one way.

And that’s not out of the norm, especially for Sidney, the far Eastern outpost of Class A.

In 1989, in the midst of their seven-year championship run, the Eagles once traveled to Whitefish, Anaconda and Ronan on the way to a state title, capping the odyssey with an ad for AAA.

This week’s trip for Sidney would take the same amount of time as a jaunt to Minneapolis and is virtually the same distance as a game in Sidney, Nebraska.

And while it’s at home this week, Whitefish isn’t completely protected from the grueling travel.

If the Bulldogs win this week, they would likely have to travel to play undefeated Eastern A champion Miles City, only a 1,242-mile round trip that takes nearly 10 hours to complete in one direction.

The state has budgeted for the massive travel trips. Teams are allowed to take two days to travel to a game should they have to travel more than 200 miles one way.

That provision allowed Bigfork to spend the night in Bozeman last week on its trip to Roundup, a 372-mile one-way trek at its shortest. The Vikings were even able to get in a practice at Montana State University before heading over to play the Panthers, which ended with a narrow 37-36 victory and a trip to the quarterfinals against the much more travel-friendly District 6B champions Missoula Loyola-Sacred Heart.

Still, should Bigfork be able to win this Saturday, they’ll be back on the road, this time possibly even further away for a 436-mile one-way ride to Huntey Project or 355 miles to Malta.

Even in Class AA, where most of the big cities are closer together and linked by freeways, it’s possible for Flathead to travel to Billings’ Daylis Stadium to play Billings Senior next week, a nearly 460-mile trip, the longest in the division.

Traveling seems to be part of the playoffs, especially with no neutral-site games.

But, it doesn’t need to be.

There is a way to configure the playoff bracket into regional and divisional seeds to limit the longer trips until the final few weeks of the season.

While the 14-team Class AA is required by its limited amount of schools to play early-round long-distance games, the lower divisions aren’t.

Class A, which plays a 12-team playoff, could limit travel without drastically altering its current bracket. The four district champions would still get bye weeks and remain in the new Western and Eastern divisions. The second seeds from each district would still host Western and Eastern wildcards, but would be aligned to play the champion of their nearest opposing district instead of the current setup, which is aligned for cross-division travel.

Creating an Eastern and Western playoff would dramatically decrease the amount of time each school spends traveling and increase the time students can practice and, well, go to school.

In Class B, a 16-team playoff, splitting the state in half is a little more difficult with an odd number of districts. However, with the 2, 3 and 4B staunchly in the East and the 4, 5 and 6B on or near the Western side of the divide, the two teams from the centrally-located 1B could be split up with a wildcard from each half.

While splitting the playoffs into conferences and regions wouldn’t entirely leave out insanely-long road trips, it would limit them, which should be important.

Needing to get an oil change before and after a road trip should only be relegated to adventures that don’t end in a win or a loss. Even grown folks on long business trips don’t take a bus.

Until then, buckle up. The playoffs are here and it may be a long ride.

Joseph Terry has worked as a sports reporter and columnist at the Daily Inter Lake since 2012. His column “Sidelines” runs weekly in the Thursday edition of the DIL Sports section. He can be reached by phone at (406) 758-4463 or by email at jterry@dailyinterlake.com.