Can you feel that? The excitement building within communities all across the country? If your passion is sports, if you have school age children in Junior/Senior High School or even college, you know what I’m talking about.

We all have that ‘thing’, that event, that something that makes us feel alive. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a number of ‘things’ to keep us going throughout the year. Some of us have that one ‘thing’, while others may have a few ‘things’, but one they put above the others.

For some it’s the beginning of spring when plants start to grow, snow starts to melt and they get excited about leaving the doldrums of the house that they have been stuck in all winter. For those folks their spirits are lifted by warming temperatures and getting outside to enjoy the great outdoors.

For others it’s the turning of the leaves in the fall, the amazing colors and picturesque scenery they provide us with. Maybe it’s the chill in the air after enduring a hot summer, the thought of getting your hunting gear together for the upcoming season. For me it’s the start of the high school, and for that matter, college fall sports season.

That means football, volleyball and cross country student athletes have been hard at it, getting ready for the new season to begin. Teams across the state could hold their first practice on Friday, August 16, and most did. The first weekend of competition for most teams will be this weekend, while some won’t step onto the field or court until the first weekend in September.

‘Officially’ teams are just a getting started in their preparation for the upcoming season. The reality is this, the teams that will finish at or near the top of their respective sport, have been preparing for this season for years.

For some time the national trend seemed to be focused on rewarding kids for simply participating in a sport, or an extracurricular activity, but maybe we are starting to shift back to a performance based determination of success.

A commercial running on TV by Gatorade, featuring Houston Texan All Pro JJ Watt encourages young athletes to “find a rival -- someone who scares them -- whether they’re far away or just across town. Sometimes they might even be family.” The Texan’s defensive end says that person “should be dedicated to taking you and defeating you. Your competitor will drive you to stay late, come in early and become obsessed.”

What I love about this is how cut and dry it is, if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best and there have been some fantastic things happening with our local sports programs right here in Blaine County that are teaching our kids to expect to have to earn their success and not be handed it.

The Hays/Lodge Pole Thunderbirds and their coaching staffs, across the board, Football, Volleyball and Basketball, have been putting in extra work to change the culture of the Thunderbird student athlete. They have implemented a weight program that is being utilized by a record number of students, girls and boys in all three sports. The coaching staff has taken their teams to camps and tournaments throughout the summer and have tried to install a sense of belief in the student, their parents and the community that if they stick with it, things will change.

It’s true some teams have been doing this for years, and as a result, those teams have won, and won a lot. So for myself, who covers the county sports scene, to see a program that has struggled through the years go all in on a plan like this, I’m excited. It’ll be fun to see how they compete on the football field and on the court this year but down the road, in a few years, if they stick with it, great success could be headed to Thunderbird Country.

The Thunderbirds don’t have to look far to see what hard work can result in. The Turner Tornado girls basketball program went from a winless team to a contender to bring home hardware at the Northern C after four years of yearlong work. The Harlem girls basketball team have turned their program around, going from the bottom of the District 2B to the Northern B Champions and earning a trip to the State B tournament in just three years. The Chinook boys basketball team advanced to the State Tournament for the first time in 30 years after winning the Northern C.

The Chinook football and volleyball programs know what success is. The Volleyball team has gone undefeated in conference play eight times since moving to Class C, won multiple District Tournaments and qualified for the state tournament in 2013 and 2015. The football team has won two state championships this decade (2010, 2015). Both Sugarbeeter teams had busy summers and both the girls and the boys utilized an effective weight program this summer while also attending team camps, Big Sky State games and individual camps.

The point is this, if you want your team to win on the scoreboard it starts with hard work being put in long before the season begins. It also takes dedication from the student athlete, the coaching staff, parents and guardians to ‘buy into the system’ and support all the players and coaches, no exception, top to bottom in that process.

The rewards from all the dedication and hard work come in many forms: personal growth, pride in what and who you have become as an individual, a teammate and an athlete. A feeling of accomplishment regardless of the ending. With hard work comes winning and thusly more coverage within the community, more talk around the school and if you win enough, throughout the state.

I will do my very best to include all the football and volleyball scores as well as cross country results in the paper each week, no exception. My intent is to provide teams that win with more coverage than those who don’t simply because they earned it, no matter the school. I rely on the coaching staff and/or school Athletic Directors to get me that information at the conclusion of each contest. It can be done. Last winter the Blaine County Journal included every box score from evey girls and boys basketball game played December through March. That was possible because the coaches in Turner, Chinook, Harlem and Hays/Lodge Pole did their part.

We’ve struggled to get the scores, stats and information from teams in the fall and are looking to change that. A questionnaire was emailed to the Athletic Director and team coaches prior to the start of fall practice. The following pages include a preview of Cross Country teams in Harlem and Hays/Lodge Pole and football and volleyball teams in Chinook, Harlem and Hays/Lodge Pole. I did not get all I requested back from all the coaches but I did my best with the information received and hope you, the reader, finds it informative and enjoy it.