Storybook finish for the Braves

Dan Hodge has been boys track coach at Flathead for eight of the Braves’ state championships, and Saturday was maybe the first where he began the cleanup portion of the meet before it was actually over.

It was during the two Class A 3,200 meters races; fretting over a 1,600-meter relay that no longer included burner Ben Bliven, Hodge wandered off and started taking down the bunting along the throwing venues. 

“I had to get away from people asking me, ‘What are you going to do?’ “Hodge said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to go make something up.” 

He settled on Cameron Wells to sub in for Blevin, senior for fellow senior. A three-sport athlete at Flathead, Wells wasn’t the fastest through the first lap, but the Braves — as it turned out — were well on their way.  

“He’s a good kid,” Hodge said of Wells. “He waited and stuck with it and did the best he could, and he made the best of his opportunity.” 

Hodge amended that: All his guys made the best of it, and that includes not one but two stalwarts who were felled by sore hamstrings: Bliven, and fellow senior Michael Mahar.  

“It’s never your slouches,” Hodge said with a laugh, and he remembered being favored in 1988 only to lose his top sprinter to a disastrous Monday afternoon water balloon fight. The guy took a knee to the thigh and suffered a severe hematoma.  

Mahar was hurt running the 200 at Flathead’s first meet; the school record-holder in the pole vault (14 feet, 7 inches), he had cleared 15 feet in summer workouts and had been part of the Braves’ 2024 sprint relays.  

Now he couldn’t get his speed up to vault like he was. 

“He only took one vault at divisionals,” Hodge noted. “And he qualified.” 

Mahar cleared 13-0 at the Western AA, then 13-6 at state. It wasn’t enough to place, and when Bliven’s possible firsts in the 100 and 200 became a second and that’s it, you wondered if the Braves would again get nosed out at the tape. 

“A year ago we were in a close, close battle,” Hodge said, when Gallatin held off his Braves. Saturday made it two years in a row.  

It helped that Will Hollensteiner was around, obviously: The junior followed up his record-setting 400 from Friday with a scintillating performance Saturday, winning the 200 and 300 hurdles and running that obscene 45.93-second split in the relay. Not to mention he only lost the triple jump on the last attempt by Butte’s Sam Henderson. 

Then there’s Lane Chivers, whose mom happens to be the former Alicia Allison, who was part of three straight State AA titles by the Flathead Bravettes from 1991-93. It was in 1993 when Flathead, needed to make up a one-point deficit, had Allison run the anchor leg on the long relay. She crossed the line third, more than enough to clinch the title, and it’s funny how things work out. 

Her son took the baton for the third leg with Flathead in sixth and moved the Braves up to third; mom clinched what was Joe McKay’s eighth state title as Bravettes’ coach. 

Flathead’s boys tied for its 2015 title with Helena. “All the other years, I think I knew on day 1 how it was going to turn out,” Hodge said.  

Not so this past weekend, which makes it especially memorable: For Wells, who for the record ran on the winning long relay for the fourth time on Saturday; for everyone at Legends Stadium. 

“The way it ended,” Hodge said. “That’s a storybook. They make movies about endings like that.” 

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