In 1970, a championship game brought community together

The fog was so thick that when the football was coming, Dave Hoerner only knew it was near when he heard it whistle through the mist and it hit the ground.

“I’d hear it land beside me,” Hoerner said. “Then I’d go and pick it up.”

It was Nov. 6, 1970. Hoerner was a senior in high school, an outside linebacker, running back and punt returner for the Columbia Falls football team.

That game, 46 years ago, was the last time the Wildcats played in a state football championship.

The game was played on a Friday night rather than a Saturday afternoon so fans could go watch the Montana State-University of Montana Cat-Griz game in Missoula the next day.

The weather had been good, but as the game progressed, the fog rolled in. Back then, Havre was a bigger school and a bigger team.

Doug Cordier was an offensive lineman for the Cats.

“The thing that stands out to me,” Cordier said. “Is they hit harder than anyone I played against.”

Cordier grew up in Columbia Falls, but his family went to Havre in the summer months. He was friends with Verne Solodjek. Verne grew up to be one tough lineman for Havre, and Cordier had to block him.

“He man-handled me,” he said.

The Wildcats kept in close in the first half and were tied at 12 apiece with five minutes left in the second quarter. But Havre pulled away to win, 38-14.

Steve Kracher was a junior running back.

“It was different back in those days,” he recalled. There was no extended playoff like there is today.

Teams had to win their conference just to make the playoffs and there were three conferences — West, East and Central. Havre beat Billings Central in the East, Columbia Falls got a bye to the championship.

The Cats went 6-2, including a key win against favorite Whitefish to win the conference.

Cordier recalled that Kracher ran back a kick off with less than a couple of minutes in the game to beat the Bulldogs.

The guy Cordier was supposed to block was faster than him and stayed out in front. Cordier made the block when Kracher pushed Cordier into him.

The game itself was different. There were no armbands filled with plays. There was no spread offense. The ran from the “T” formation.

A lot.

“I think we had four running plays and one pass play,” Kracher recalled. “We were pretty good at running those plays.”

The passes were minimal, at best.

“They throw more in a half today than we did all season,” Kracher said.

Harold Hughes was their coach. He said the fog of the championship game was certainly a factor.

“You could hardly see what was going on,” he recalled.

Hughes noted just getting to the championship was a big accomplishment. Just a couple of years before, the team had only won a couple of games.

“It was a great bunch of kids. Hard working,” he said.

The game also brought the community together. Prior to the game, the bleachers only held about 40 people and the scoreboard was wood with numbers hung on hooks.

But in the two weeks before the contest, the Booster Club bought a lit scoreboard and the community rallied and built bleachers for both sides of the field.

Cordier said it was special time. Newspapers came and did stories and the town was in the spotlight.

At the time, it was the largest crowd in school history, with 2,635 fans, according to a story in the Hungry Horse News.

“We were put in the big leagues pretty quick,” Hoerner recalled.

Hughes, who was a math teacher as well, coached the Wildcats until 1980 and had many successful, if not gut-wrenching, seasons.

The next year for example, the Cats were knocked out of the divisional title by Anaconda Central, who ran a double reverse on a two-point conversion to beat the Cats, 8-7, Hughes recalled.

Kracher said Hughes was a great coach.

“He was Vince Lombardi reincarnated,” he said.

Kracher had a great career as a running back at Montana State University and is the university’s hall of fame. He went on to coach and teach high school and for the past decade has been the equipment manager for Cal Poly University.

He just recently retired and is now traveling the U.S., going to college football games across the country in an RV.

Hughes left teaching and moved to Polson where he raises red angus cattle with his wife and family. He said he hopes to come up and watch the game.

Cordier was a longtime counselor at Columbia Falls High School and served a term as a state Representative for House District 3.

He has since retired.

Hoerner is a well-known pilot and founded Red Eagle Aviation in Kalispell and still flies and teaches flying today, having logged more than 30,000 hours in the air.

Win or lose this week, this is a special moment for this year’s squad, Hoerner noted.

“They’ll remember this week the rest of their lives,” he said.

Game time versus Dillon is 1 p.m.