Bulldogs look to improve size, strength

It was a ruthless way for the Bulldogs to end a tough football season.

Whitefish was shutout at home Friday night in their season finale, as rival Columbia Falls cruised to a 51-0 conference victory. The Wildcats’ Kaleb Johnson caught four touchdown passes from Austin Barth, including two for more than 40 yards, as Columbia Falls opened up a 33-point lead in the first quarter.

“That’s a great football team,” Whitefish coach Chad Ross said. “We wanted to take away the run, and we did a good job of that. Then Kaleb and Austin took it over the top of us.”

The loss magnified an area Whitefish needs to improve before next season — size and strength.

“The No. 1 thing we have to do is hit the weight room,” Ross said. “We were in the right spot on the field most of the time Friday, but we weren’t big enough or quick enough to make the play. A lot of that has to do with physical strength.”

Ross said the coaching staff is encouraging the underclassmen to play other sports in the off season while continuing to lift weights.

“We want them to play basketball, track and wrestle,” he said. “Wrestling makes you tough.”

With 11 players on the current roster set to return as seniors in 2011, the coach is hopeful those students will put in the extra work this summer to accompany the experience they gained this year.

“Everyone keeps talking about next year and our experience,” he said, “but experience only matters if they get in the weight room and come back bigger. The game knowledge will help us tremendously, but now we need to get a step quicker and bigger.”

He pointed to the Forrest brothers, Chris and Jacob, as well as Maxl Smith and Connor Donahue, as players he expects to step it up next year.

“We have some good, young guys that played a lot this year, and hopefully they’ll push the other guys to the next level,” Ross said. “If we have 12-15 seniors that lift this summer, we’ll be able to compete for the conference.”

Ross noted that he’s already had a few kids who didn’t play this year commit to try out for the team next season.

The Bulldogs will loose four seniors from the current roster when Mac Roche, Jeremy Nielsen, Nate Wiedenmeyer and Darren Vanamann graduate in the spring. Roche is still considering playing football at Carroll College, and Nielsen hopes to play at the collegiate level as well.

“He works as hard as any kid I’ve ever had,” Ross said about Nielsen.

The coach commended the seniors for their leadership, even through a trying season.

“Even with the season over, they all asked how they can help make the team better next year,” Ross said. “Of course, they’re disappointed in this year, but they get it, too. They understand it was a young team — there’s only four of them.”

Ross said the highlight of the season came in the community support. The Dawg Pound was regularly packed on Friday nights, and the fans stayed loyal and loud, even with the 1-7 record.

“The kids wanted to play for the fans,” Ross said. “They played for something bigger than themselves. That has to be a highlight of the season. The other highlight was to see the individual maturity of each player. I love seeing young students mature into young men.”

Whitefish finished the season 0-4 in the conference and 1-7 overall.