A change of course

With a last name well known in Griz nation, the expectation was that the seventh-grade quarterback of 2016 would be the starting high school QB in 2021. Then Will Salonen changed the play.

“It was about a week before he would have started eighth grade,” Brad Salonen said. “We would do a camping trip into West Glacier every year before school starts, and do a little fishing and just hang out.

“And Will said, ‘Dad, I’ve been thinking.’ And I said, ‘Ope, Ok, what have you been thinking?’“

The thought Will Salonen had was to skip eighth grade football and stay on the golf course. By the end of that six-week gridiron season, he figured he’d know if he’d made a mistake: If he missed football enough to play as a freshman at Glacier High.

“Those next two months, I must have picked him up at the middle school 20 times,” Brad Salonen remembered. “We’d see his buddies walking to the field, carrying their pads, and I’d ask, ‘Do you miss it?’ And he’d say, ‘Nope.’“

Since then the youngest Salonen — older sister Taylor recently finished playing basketball at Carroll College — has become a mainstay of a talented Glacier golf team, which begins defense of its 2020 Western AA Divisional title today in Missoula.

His 76.3-stroke average (low round: 69) is second on Glacier only to junior standout Tyler Avery. Salonen hits the ball a ton, can shape shots when he gets in trouble, is an all-around student of the game and the level-headed leader.

It’s what he signed up for.

“My dad always calls it the Fun Meter,” Will says. “That bubble above your head that tells you how much fun you’re having. I always loved football and playing games and being around my buddies. But I just love going and hitting shots, playing golf, practicing. It was something I enjoyed every day.

“Football, you know, it’d be, ‘Today was fun. But tomorrow. …‘ It never gave me the same feeling.”

So it is that the son of Brad Salonen and nephew of Brian Salonen — two excellent Montana tight ends, with Brian being an All-American in 1983 — is more about stimp meter and yardage book.

“Even though it’s not the chosen sport of his bloodlines, golf is his sport,” Glacier coach Doug Manaker said. “He’s a natural at it.”

Salonen says he was 10 years old when he started hitting golf balls in the backyard, where demand quickly outstripped supply.

“My dad said, ‘Instead of doing that, let’s go the range and hit, instead of you losing all my Pro V1s,” Salonen said. “I went out and started playing and it just — well, I think for me, I just like to do things the way I want to.

“The school has the team, but the game is super individual and I like the aspect of getting to control what I do each day out there.”

Salonen could wind up at Providence or Montana Tech or Carroll College, three Frontier Conference golf programs that have made contact, or take his 4.0 grade-point average to a warm-weather school and golf in his free time. It’s the relative solitude of the “Billy Bob” — the Bill Roberts Golf Course in Helena — versus a gallery of 25,000 at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

Brad Salonen played in that stadium, catching four touchdown passes in 1988 from Grady Bennett. They’ve been friends ever since, and for nine seasons Bennett was an assistant to head girls’ basketball coach Kris Salonen, Brad’s better half, at Glacier.

“The running story was always that Kris and I would stay in basketball until Taylor and my daughter (Hailee) graduated,” Bennett, Glacier’s football coach, said. “And I would stay in football until Will graduated.”

Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Bennett has another excellent football team with Gage Sliter at QB — and Brad Salonen at one end of the chain gang. Will Salonen plays a decent game of hoops for the Wolfpack and an excellent round of golf.

“The thing I enjoy is the creativity,” he says. “In my opinion it’s the hardest sport in the world. You not only have to be able to hit the ball and physically be out there, it’s so tough mentally. It’s a reality check. It teaches you a lot about life: You hit a bad shot and it’s, ‘How am I going to get through this and save the round?’“

His phone history is filled with YouTube golf videos; his dad figures he’s watched every Tiger Woods round that is available. More or less self-taught — the few pro lessons he’s had, nobody has touched his swing — Salonen is constantly looking to apply something he sees.

“He’s good,” Manaker says. “He hits the ball a mile. He’s a student of the game. And he’s a great kid. Will is very consistent, and he’s a leader for our team, not only in how he plays but how he acts.”

It’s telling that another unnamed Western AA golf coach says that Salonen is that guy his kids never complain about; Salonen, meanwhile, may like the social aspect as much as the shot-making.

“He’s kind of a mini-adult,” his dad says. “He plays 95 percent of his rounds with my buddies.”

It has become the family game: Father and son games, or parents-and-son. If there is one regret, it’s that Brad didn’t walk with Will on the first day of the 2020 Buffalo Hill club championship. The boy scored his first ace on the last hole of the Cameron Nine. It was Kris Salonen that saw it — and bought the obligatory cocktails.

Two meets remain in his high school career: Divisionals and the State AA at Cottonwood Hills beginning Sept. 30. Soon another chapter will open for the youngest Salonen, in a book that took a dogleg left five years ago, with no regrets.

“I have walked so many rounds with him,” Brad Salonen said. “It’s been a fabulous experience for me as a dad.”