Winter sports start gearing up

The winter sports season kicked off this week, as wrestling practice started Tuesday and both girls and boys basketball starts next Monday.

The grapplers will have three weeks of practice before they start competition Dec. 1 at Whitefish.

The MatCats had a tough season last year. They didn't win their first dual until February, but then they took fourth at divisionals and ended up sending 10 grapplers to state as they got quite a bit better by the end of the year.

At state the team took 11th and every wrestler won at least one match - many of those wrestlers were young and inexperienced last year, but they'll also be returning this year.

On the hoops side, there's some coaching changes.

Girls basketball coach Kris Salonen will have Angela Milliard as her JV coach and Jim Peacock as her frosh coach. Also helping out will be volunteer assistants Tashia Howell and Cathy Spencer. Howell was the JV coach last year, but stepped down and frosh coach Sherry Peterson, who is also a teacher at Canyon Elementary, also resigned.

Peacock works at Meadow Lake Resort as the heads groundskeeper and Milliard works at Semitool, Salonen said. Milliard has assisted with volleyball and softball in the past.

Peacock has been interested in coaching at the school for several years, Salonen said. She said it should make for a good coaching team.

The boys will also have some assistant coaching changes. Head Coach Cary Finberg will lead the squad, but frosh coach Dan Block moves up to JV and Chuck Howell will coach the frosh team.

Howell is married to Tashia Howell.

Mark Beckwith resigned after last season as the boys JV coach. Chris Finberg, who assisted for years, got a job teaching physical education at Butte Central and will be their JV basketball coach.

Helping out Cary Finberg this year will be Greg Bauska, who has coached with Finberg for years and Tyler Jones, who was a member of the 2003 state championship team.

The girls have tryouts at 6 a.m. Nov. 20, then at 6 p.m. and then have practice at 2:30 p.m. next Tuesday.

The boys have tryouts at 2:30 p.m. Monday, then after school after that except for Wednesday, when practice is at noon, because of the holiday.

The basketball season starts on Dec. 7 at home when the frosh play Ronan. The first varsity home game for the boys isn't until Dec. 21 against Bigfork. The first girls home game is Dec. 16 against Frenchtown.