Eureka, Bigfork prep for new-look Western B

By JOSEPH TERRY

The Daily Inter Lake

There’s a new look in Class B football. And it hasn’t made anything easier for the defending champs.

This summer’s scheduled shakeup of Montana’s lower classifications has dissolved Class B into four divisions, with the former 6B and 7B districts combining to form an ultra-competitive Western conference.

The new league not only features defending state champion Eureka, but runner up Missoula Loyola and some of the largest programs in the class in Bigfork, Anaconda and Florence. Those teams are joined by Deer Lodge and Thompson Falls.

“Our conference, there is not a single game this year that we can look and say, this should be one we can handle with ease. There’s not one,” Eureka head coach Trevor Utter said.

“The teams that were struggling in the conference moved out. We anticipate a very difficult schedule.”

In addition to the move, the class simplified its playoff system, no longer including a wild-card team decided by power poll calculations. Now, the top four teams from the four conferences enter the playoffs.

In the West, the top four teams — Eureka, Loyola, Bigfork and Anaconda — are all state title contenders along with traditional powers in the East and North in Huntley Project and Fairfield. The tough conference reduces the margin for error, however, and could place a good team in a tough spot in the first few rounds.

“I truly believe that the state championship game could be two teams from our division,” said Eureka quarterback Garrett Graves, a University of Montana commit who threw the winning touchdown in last year’s title game.

Graves heads a Eureka team that has its sights set on a title repeat, returning 10 players and seven seniors this season.

“We’ve got some big shoes to fill, particularly on our line,” Utter said. “We lost four of the five starters on our line. The success of your team is dependent on how well your line can jell and get the job done, whether it’s in the run game or the pass game, or defensively, stopping the run.

“We have some great kids that have worked extremely hard in the offseason. I anticipate that we’re going to still have success in those areas. But, boy I tell you, until you play somebody other than your JV team in practice, you don’t really know. We look pretty good in practice.”

“We’ve got a lot of really good guys coming up that are ready to play,” Graves said of the revamped offensive line.

“They’ve been doing really well this summer and they’ve been working hard.

“We have some guys that haven’t had a whole lot of the starlight on them because they’ve been sitting behind some of those really big guys that graduated last year. They’re ready to take that position and lead the team. Line is the most important thing and those guys are studs. They’re some strong dudes.”

Eureka also returns dynamic star Brenton Pluid, who missed most of last season with a broken collarbone, but should add some spark to the Lions potent lineup.

“In my opinion he’s the best player on the team,” Graves said. “He’ll be someone I’ll definitely be tossing the ball to quite a bit.”

Bigfork returns nearly every player from a team that went 7-1 in the regular season in 2016 but finished without a share of the league title for the first time since 2008.

“We’ve got a lot of game experience with a lot of our kids coming back,” Bigfork head coach Todd Emslie said. “We’ve got some pretty good skill kids. We’ve got a line with some kids that have played quite a few snaps.”

The Vikings are talented, with returning quarterback Augie Emslie and leading skill position players Anders Epperly, Logan Taylor and Randy Stultz are looking to get Bigfork back to the top of the class.

“All of our receiving corps and most of our line is coming back,” Augie Emslie said. “We’ve got the chemistry going already.”

Both Northwest teams have a tough open to the season, each starting against a playoff team from a year ago. Eureka hosts Cut Bank and Bigfork is at Shelby, both games scheduled to start at 7 tonight.

“That old, what used to be the 1B, that’s a hell of a tough conference,” Utter said. “There’s not an easy game on the schedule. We’re going to have to strap up every week.”