Full Count: Fritz Neighbor's top 10 for 2023

As a trip to the FCS title game looms, I wonder at times if I’m getting too old for this.

Flights to faraway places (Dallas) are still exciting, but I’m just as excited that we’re taking a photographer who I will gladly let drive the rental car — something unheard of in my younger, 20-20 days. 

Not that you should be concerned. Take a cue from my local waitress, who when I asked what the cutoff was for the senior meals, waved me off and said she didn’t care.

“Ok good, because I’m 60,” I stage-whispered. 

“I don’t care,” she repeated, louder.

Thirty-two years ago at the Billings Gazette, I started writing a year-end Top 10. The objective was to celebrate the top events I saw and/or covered that year, and as such I have to honorably mention a few I didn’t see, like the Whitefish girls soccer squad, and the State A boys champion Columbia Falls soccer program, and the Crosstown flag football final that Glacier won for a second straight fall.

Columbia Falls had quite a year, including a first-ever State A softball championship. I missed it because I was covering another softball tournament: The AA, which Glacier High won.

Even in the 1990s I couldn’t be in two places at once, and so it was only later that I could piece together the WildKat Nine’s journey through (or around) rain, lightning and funnel cloud.

Here is my Top 10 from 2023, with a shout out to No. 11: The Flathead wrestling teams each taking third at state.

10. Columbia Falls wins State A wrestling. The MatCats flew under this writer’s radar, after a promising 2021-22 season came up short. Then they scored 201 points at state, winning their first title since 1990 by almost 50. Behind 10 placers the MatCats rolled, to the non-surprise of their lone individual champion, 160-pounder Justin Windauer. “I’ve known it all along,” he said.

9. The Bravettes’ last-second shots. In a season full of tight wins, their two against Missoula Hellgate stand out. Kennedy Moore’s reverse lay-up off an offensive rebound beat the Knights at the buzzer in the regular season; Avery Chouinard’s three that bounced around the rim and in won the Western AA Divisional championship. Both shots came in Flathead’s gym and the latter nearly took the roof off.

8. Columbia Falls runs (and throws) to the A football title game. First came a 22-19 home loss to the Dillon Beavers, after which assistant Austin Barth texted: “I hope we see those guys again!” They did, after winning three playoff games, and it was in the championship. Dillon won 36-35 in overtime, overcoming among other things, 402 passing yards by Griz signee Cody Schweikert. It was his final game playing for his head coach and father, Jaxon..

7. Wolfpack boys take third at State AA basketball. There was a lot to like about this team, from Noah Dowler to Ty Olsen to Adam Nikunen to Cohen Kastelitz. Kaidrian Buls was perhaps the unsung hero of a 17-8 team that beat eventual state champion MIssoula Hellgate on the road: Moved into the starting lineup because of an injury to Tyler McDonald, Buls averaged 11.3 points in Glacier’s final 11 games, eight of them wins.

6. Griz 37, Cats 7. The last three Cat-Griz games have been lopsided, including the Bobcats’ 55-14 runaway in 2022. Junior Bergen didn’t play in that game, and did in UM’s two wins in Missoula. I doubt he’d have made the difference in Bozeman, but certainly the former Bobcat commit would have made it closer, right?

5. Polson wins the first-ever MHSA-sanctioned baseball state title. Pirates baseball coach Brad Fisher named one son Xavier, after the college; he named the next one Espn, after the World Wide Leader. Espn Fisher went the distance in a 10-4 win over Whitefish in the final. He supplied a lot of curveballs for strikes. The skies around Butte supplied the smoke.

4. Wolfpack girls win AA softball championship. Glacier needed to win an if-necessary game to take its second state title, and it seemed like a bad omen when Helena went up 4-3 on a solo homer that sent Pack center fielder Brooklyn Imperato cartwheeling over the pliable fence. The Green and Blue shook it off, hitting five home runs in a 19-7 win. Ace pitcher Ella Farrell got the victory, and later landed Gatorade Player of the Year honors.

3. Flathead’s run to the State AA girls basketball title game. The Bravettes had almost no “laughers,” instead vanquishing foe after foe with steady and sometimes spectacular play down the stretch. Seniors Maddy Moy, Akilah Kubi, Chouinard and Tali Miller bracketed Moore, the wunderkind junior, and went 20-5. They lost to Billings West in the championship, a rare loss of a tight game. Make that a rare loss, period.

2. Glacier’s run to the State AA football championship. This year’s senior class had been building to this season, and it culminated in a 35-27 loss to Bozeman in jam-packed Van Winkle Stadium. The Pack had a 1,000-yard rusher (Kobe Dorcheus), a 1,000-yard receiver (Kastelitz) and a 3,000-yard thrower (Jackson Presley), not to mention an outrageous all-around player (Kash Goicoechea). That’s for starters. By the end you couldn’t help but be dazzled by all the speed the Wolfpack, Hawks and semifinal foe Gallatin Raptors displayed.

1. Griz 31, NDSU 29. I’m not sure which contest to move off the Grizzlies’ Mt. Rushmore of Great Games. The win over App State in 2009 has to stay; the 2008 win at James Madison? The 40-0 run to beat South Dakota State in 2009? OK, they can stay, but somebody has to go. Bergen was again a difference maker: Punt return TD, another TD receiving and then a two-point PAT pass that was tipped on its way to Keelan White – the winning points, as it turned out.

Not a bad year at all. Here’s to an even better 2024 which, like my next senior meal, is just around the corner.

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or at fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.