This fall will see Don Peoples Jr. lead the Butte Central football team for the 35th season.

He took over the program as a 25-year-old head coach in 1989. He has compiled more than 200 wins and led BC to two appearances in the Class A State championship game.

Only Butte High legendary coach Harry “Swede” Dahlberg, who won 222 games in 34 years, has more wins coaching high school football in the Mining City.

Peoples was also a long-time basketball assistant coach in the BC boys’ and girls’ programs. He was head coach of the Central girls, but stepped down to assistant after his daughter, Mairissa, was diagnosed with cancer. He was an assistant for head coach Meg Murphy when his daughter Quinn helped lead the Maroons to the Class A State title in 2011.

Don and Barb Peoples’ daughter, Mollie, was a key member of Central’s 2016 title team, and their son, Danny, was the quarterback on BC’s 2014 team. That team came within an eyelash of winning the championship.

Before his coaching days, Peoples also played quarterback for the Maroons. Along with the great Brian Morris, Peoples helped lead the Maroons to the Class A State title game in 1981. BC fell 12-7 in a heartbreaker to Miles City in what is now called Bulldog Memorial Stadium.

That 1981 team was also part of perhaps the greatest Butte High-Butte Central game. Don Douglas and the Bulldogs prevailed in overtime on the way to winning the Class AA crown.

Coach is only one of the hats Peoples wears today. He is the president of the BC foundation and the superintendent of Butte Central Schools. This past school year, he served as interim principal, too, and he referees basketball as a member of the Montana Officials Association.

With his name synonymous with Butte Central, Peoples has worked his entire career to keep the school’s storied tradition alive — on the field and in the classroom.