Double duty for Diede

For more than a few weeks earlier in 2020 Ethan Diede thought seriously about giving up football.

Now that he’s playing both ways for the 6-2 Glacier Wolfpack, which faces Billings Senior today in a State AA quarterfinal, he wonders what he might have missed.

“I never really played defense until this year,” said the 6-foot-1, 200-pound senior tight end and defensive end. “I wish I had – but it is what it is.”

Here’s the deal: baseball has always been No. 1 for Diede, and basketball has always been there and playing three sports was beginning to be a grind. Especially since last fall a back injury kept him off the football field.

“My main sport is definitely baseball,” said Diede, who played third base and first base for the AA American Legion Kalispell Lakers. “It’s my passion, it’s what I’d like to do at the collegiate level. With my back injury, I wasn’t sure it was going to be smart to keep playing football.”

The encouragement came from teammates like Tyler Hausmann and JT Allen and of course Glacier football coach Grady Bennett.

“I think his thinking was, ‘If I can’t be doing everything 100 percent, maybe I shouldn’t play,’” Bennett said. “But he’s such a good kid and athlete I told him, ‘I don’t care if you show up on Aug. 15, we’ll have you.’”

At the end of the Lakers’ 31-16 campaign – Diede hit .341 with a .982 OPS – he showed up and quickly found he wasn’t just a tight end anymore.

“That was different for me, for sure,” he said. “I thought, maybe, OK, I’ll be a role player. I was lucky to be put at a position where they needed me. I started the first game, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot.”

That first game was against Helena Capital, a 43-20 Glacier win that pivoted around a series of second-half plays by Diede: He jumped on an errant Capital punt snap; he recovered a fumble; he caught his lone touchdown pass of the season. And the gap grew.

It was quite the debut. Now he’s among the top five on his team in defensive score, and among other things has three sacks, four passes deflected and an interception.

“I give all credit to Coach (Jesse) Rigler,” Diede said. “And Coach Stitch (Kevin McDowell) too. I knew nothing about playing defense coming in. I definitely wouldn’t be playing at all if it wasn’t for those two.”

It’s been a trial by fire: Teams logically might run away from Glacier’s other defensive end, 250-pound Rocco Beccari, but Diede has held up.

“I don’t think any one of us coaches expected the success he’s had,” Bennett said. “He’s really become one of our best football players on both sides of the ball.”

On offense Diede has eight catches, which isn’t a bad amount in an offense that features 230-pound junior tailback Jake Rendina.

“Rendina is so fun to block for, because no matter how you block for him, he finds room,” he said. “He’ll figure out a way to either cut off the block or run over you and the guy you’re blocking. It’s never a bad day when you block for him.”

He has at least one more day of it, at Daylis Stadium in Billings.

“We have a good plan,” Diede said.

In it, the guy who spent a whole summer “not really thinking about football,” will play both ways, contributing nicely to an excellent team. A three-sport guy. Bennett likes those.

“We like the kids to be active all year-round with our programs, but that’s not the reality,” Bennett said. “If football is No. 3, that’s OK. We’re obviously very happy he stuck with it, because this is the year it’s really clicked for him.”