Byrds of a feather

The Byrd boys started playing soccer because their parents thought they’d get hurt playing football.

It worked out well for them, with O’Brien’s Columbia Falls Wildcats playing in the Class A boys final versus Whitefish Saturday and younger brother Brenden’s Glacier Wolfpack girls in the AA state final in Helena today.

Growing up, soccer was a big part of their lives and still is today. Just witness the basement in their childhood home, which still bears the scars of heated battles between the brothers.

“We played backyard games, basement soccer games, and we played a ton of nerf soccer in our basement,” Brenden said. “There’s holes in the walls to tell the stories.”

Both adopted, O’Brien is four years older than Brenden and never let him forget it.

“We’d play soccer against each other at the house and I used to beat up on him pretty good,” O’Brien said.

During Brenden’s senior year of high school, O’Brien returned from college and was an assistant coach at Columbia Falls.

“I was able to at least get one of those years with him,” O’Brien said.

Brenden took over coaching duties of the Glacier girls program in 2012 after four years assisting O’Brien in Whitefish and three years as an assistant coach at Helena Capital. The season before he took over, Glacier had gone 0-11-1.

Now the Wolfpack has had two of the best seasons in school history — last season they won the Western AA division and this fall as the No. 2 seed have beaten Helena Capital, Billings Skyview and upset Bozeman on their path to the final.

“He just deserves obviously so much credit, so much credit,” O’Brien said. “And he’s just one of those guys that would just never ask for any credit either, you know, he’s there because he loves coaching the kids and just a dang good role model and a great father. I’m just so happy for him.”

O’Brien coached at Whitefish High School for 12 seasons and built the programs into one of the top in the state — the Bulldogs won nine conference titles and four state titles on his watch — before handing the reins to John Lacey, who’s won back to back titles with the team. In 2015 O’Brien took over at Columbia Falls.

There’s a twist: The last time Columbia Falls boys won a state title was 2005, defeating Whitefish in overtime.

While O’Brien has been on the big stage before, it’s a new experience for Brenden as a head coach.

“I’ve been here as an assistant coach at Helena Capital and Whitefish as well,” Brenden said. “And it’s fun to, you know, to be in the places where these coaches have helped me become this coach.”

Brenden often leans on his older brother for advice, too.

“All the way up through my career, even when I was first planning my first parent letter as head coach, I’d talked to O’Brien about it at first,” he said. “So just things that are tried and true things that he’s been through that I’ve had to kind of work through as well.”

Brenden says O’Brien is the more athletic one and better soccer player. O’Brien played on the back line and Brenden followed in his footsteps.

“He had a flip throw in that was so deadly,” Brenden said.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone that didn’t know the Byrd family: O’Brien, a father of three, runs O’Brien’s Liquor and Wine in Columbia Falls and Brenden, a father of two, took over the family business, Kalispell Liquor and Wine. Their grandparents once owned a convenience store with a laundromat, trailer park and butcher shop that was a fixture in Martin City before closing its doors a decade ago.

Now the brothers are part of putting northwestern Montana on the map as a soccer hotbed and right now they’re enjoying the experience.

“This could be a once in a lifetime, you know?” O’Brien said. “It’s been a lot of time in the trenches and then for the kind of stars to align on this season of all seasons, the most challenging season ever, is really cool. I think just the families right now are just soaking, soaking it all in.”