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Podcast No. 101: West Side Shriners
This special edition of the ButteCast includes the four West Side captains for Saturday’s Montana East-West Shrine Game along with their coaches and some local Shriners.
The podcast was recorded in the Coaches Corner at the Metals Sports Bar & Grill.
All four captains are future Montana State Bobcats. They are J.J. Dolan and Adam Jones of Missoula Sentinel, Patrick Duchien of Florence and Talon Marsh of Helena Capital.
Dolan is a 6-foot, 165-pound safety/nickel back. He will Wear No 5 Jones is a 6-1, 185-pound running back. He will don No. 6.
Duchein is a 6-2, 205-pound quarterback who will wear No. 15. Marsh is listed on the roster as 6-1, 235 pounds, but he is at least 15 pounds heavier now. He will wear No. 2.
Duchein and Jones, the offensive captains, joined the show first. The were followed by the defensive leaders, Dolan and Marsh. The captains were voted on by their teammates and announced Wednesday night, just before the podcast.
West head coach Kyle Mihelish and assistant Matt Reyant followed the captains. Both are coaches for reigning Class AA State champion Helena Capital.
They were followed by Dillon coach Zach McRae and Polson head coach Carson Oakland. Oakland is taking over at Polson after two years at St. Ignatius. The 25-year-old Oakland, by the way, is married to the former Sierra Pica, a star for Butte Central’s State champion 2016 girls’ basketball team.
Pat Duchien, coach of two-time defending Class B State champion Florence and Missoula Loyola coach Todd Hughes followed McRae and Oakland.
Then came some men and women behind the scenes, Jeff and Velvet Hartwick, Darrel Storey, Wynn Randall and “The Closer” Joe Sidor.
The game kicks off at 7 p.m. Saturday at Naranche Stadium.
The captains pictured are, from left, J.J. Dolan, Talon Marsh, Adam Jones and Patrick Duchien.
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A not-so gentle push down the slippery slope of sports betting
Standing in the betting line on Sunday morning, I felt like I was making a huge mistake.
I looked around and saw a bunch of people who looked absolutely ridiculous.
One guy in particular had a Kansas City Chiefs Starter jacket on over his Chiefs hoodie. He was wearing a Chiefs hat and some pants that said “Chiefs” on them about 150 times.
I was really glad that I paid for the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. That meant I wouldn’t have to watch the NFL Sunday in a place like that.
Never would I want to find myself in the company of a guy who was also most likely wearing Chiefs Underoos, but that is not what was making me feel so uneasy. Instead, I felt like I was starting to slide down the very slippery slope of sports betting.
I was doing something that I swore I would never do. I was throwing bad money after bad money.
For a few years, some friends and I met at this old sports bar for lunch every Friday during the football season. We would look over the point spreads on the sheet of paper handed out by the one-eyed bookie.
We would discuss the spreads and try to snuff out some can’t-miss games as we ate lunch.
The lines used to come out fairly early in the week, and the one-eyed bookie would never adjust them. If a starting quarterback went down with an injury during a practice on Thursday, the line would stay the same.
We thought we could outsmart the one-eyed bookie, but we never did.
Each week, I would write down four teams on the back of a casino ticket. I always bet $10, and if I hit all four games, I would collect $110 early the next week.
That happened exactly one time in four or five seasons of betting every Friday.
The worst thing I did was win a four-team ticket early on. That is the feeling you chase. That is what gets you hooked
It wasn’t that I needed the money. My wife would just take the winnings, anyway. It was the thrill of winning that was addictive.
Hitting a four-team parlay is almost impossible to do. The way Las Vegas sets those numbers, every game is a toss-up.
Hitting a four-team parlay is like flipping a coin four times and having it come up “heads” all four times.
You can do it, but, on average, you give up your $10 to the bookie about 15 times for every one time that he gives you $110.
That is what you call a losing proposition, and I wasn’t even close to average. Like playing the lottery, betting on sports is a tax for people who are bad at math.
If you are only betting $10 a week, then it is OK. That is a fun way to make the games a little more interesting.
It sure beats acting like a Dungeons and Dragons geek and playing fantasy football.
The one-eyed bookie was one of two bookies I knew of in town. He was a very friendly guy who wasn’t very good at hiding his illegal activity.
During the pull-tab rush before the Super Bowl, he would sell his big-money — and highly illegal — tabs in the bar’s cooler. All an agent of the Gambling Control Division had to do to bust him was stand in the long line that ran into the cooler.
Luckily, they didn’t seem to look too hard.
While the one-eyed bookie took mostly small bets, the other bookie would take big bets over the phone. I knew that was too dangerous to get involved in.
I have seen enough movies to know that I would find myself in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental if I went that route.
That bookie, who I believe got out of the business, is also a nice guy, but he had some collectors who might break your thumbs if they have to.
OK, so I never heard of anyone having their thumbs broken, even though I had some friends who owed him a lot of money. The romantic in me, though, likes to think there were a few.
I was at the sports bar that Sunday morning because my four-team parlay was shot before the early NFL games even kicked off. I picked two can’t-miss college games on Saturday and two can’t-miss NFL games on Sunday.
Once the college games missed, I ran down to pick four more can’t-miss NFL games. This time, I had more than $10 in hand as I chased that winning feeling and tried to make up for my losses.
Even though I always thought I was too smart to fall for such a thing, there I was falling for it.
It was so easy to do, too.
That is why professional sports leagues used to avoid Vegas like we always assumed people would avoid the plague.
They didn’t want their athletes exposed to easy gambling and be tempted by “Sin City.”
Now we have the Raiders and Golden Knights in Vegas, and almost every other professional stadium has turned into Las Vegas.
There was a time when you couldn’t even say the word “gamble” in stadiums. Now, gambling is all over the place.
Many teams even have sports books inside the stadium. They also advertise for online betting on the signs behind home plate. You can’t listen to a game, a sports radio show or a sports podcast without hearing ads for betting.
Then, the NFL is surprised that it suddenly has a problem with players placing bets? And it apparently did very little to put in safeguards to protect those players.
Recently, Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore of the Detroit Lions and Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders were suspended for gambling. That came after former Atlanta Falcons receiver Calvin Ridley, now of the Jacksonville Jaguars, missed a season for gambling.
Isaiah Rodgers of the Indianapolis Colts is now being investigated because he is suspected of gambling on Colts games, and he is looking at a very lengthy suspension.
You certainly cannot excuse these players — especially if they were betting on games involving their own team.
But you also cannot point a finger at them without also pointing a finger at professional sports leagues that have hopped into bed with the gambling industry.
Not only are these billionaire owners giving their fans a not-so gentle nudge down that slippery slope to a gambling problem, they are pushing their own players down it, too.
Apparently, they just took the gambling money without giving the evils that they decried for decades a second thought.
Fans can bet from the front row, but players can’t place a bet from the locker room? On a completely different sport?
Professional sports have completely wiped away the line that used to protect the sport. The owners took the gambling money and just threw their players under the bus.
You have to wonder what Pete Rose thinks of all this.
I caught my footing and climbed back up the gambling slope before the old sports bar closed and the county tore it down.
Luckily, I got a hold of myself before internet gambling turned my phone into a live-in bookie. Otherwise, things could have gotten really ugly.
Thankfully, running into that fan with the Chiefs Underoos helped me see the light.
If I was betting from my phone on the couch, I might not have been so lucky.
— Bill Foley, who prefers Spider-Man Underoos, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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Podcast No. 100: John Thatcher
John Thatcher calls Butte the “greatest sports town in the world.”
I always thought he was right about that. Nobody cares more about local sports than Butte. That is why organizations like the Silver B’s and Butte Sports Hall of Fame are so successful. It’s why the Coaches Corner at Metals Sports Bar & Grill is so awesome.
Nobody is a better representative of Butte than John Thatcher. He was the tough-as-nails athlete and coach who embodied everything that Butte, America stands for. He is tough, and he is honest.
At Western Montana College, now called Montana Western, he earned all-conference in football, basketball and baseball. He scored the first touchdown at Alumni Coliseum, when he played for Montana Tech. He played college basketball against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Of course, he is best known for coaching. That is seemingly what he was put on this planet to do.
Thatcher led Butte Central to the 1978 Class A State boys’ basketball title. He then coached Butte High to Class AA State title game appearances in 2004 and 2007.
He also coached with Kelvin Sampson at Montana Tech, and he could have gone with Sampson at any of his many stops in college hoops. You better believe Sampson would love to have Thatcher on his bench to work with post players today at the University of Houston.
Instead, Thatcher is assisting Jeff Graham on the Montana Tech women’s basketball team. He is also doing his darndest to be the best grandpa for his eight grandchildren. You should see the costumes his grandchildren put him in every Halloween.
I was lucky enough to have a front-row seat as a writer for The Montana Standard when Thatcher led the Bulldogs. I was lucky to have him join KBOW Overtime, a sports radio show Paul Panisko and I were part of for 15 years, for the better part of a decade.
John Thatcher is tough as nails, and he is honestly, sometimes to a brutal degree. But he is also genuine. He is as Butte as any person has ever been.
Thatcher is a member of the Coaches Corner at Metals Sports Bar & Grill, where this podcast was recorded. He was inducted into the Butte Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.
And at 76, John Thatcher is still the toughest man in any room he walks into.
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Leskovar Athletes of the Week: Cliry Conway, Lakota Collins
Cliry Conway and Lakota Collins are this week’s Leskovar Honda Athletes of the Week.
Conway, the leader of the Harrison Avenue Liquor team of the Copper City Softball Majors League, takes home the girls’ award.
She is a stud shortstop with a great arm. She has been a playmaker in the field all season, and she has been one of the team’s most consistent hitters. She is an on-base machine.
More importantly, Conway is contagiously positive and her teammate’s biggest cheerleader. Coach Brooke Samson calls her a “coach’s dream.”
Collins takes home the boys’ award. He leads the Elks team of the Northwest Little League in most statistics. When not on the mound as the ace of the staff, he has found a way to keep his bat hot despite half the team’s games being rained out.
Collins’ “no brakes” base running means every hit brings complete excitement to the game.
Leskovar Honda, home of the 20-year, 200,000-mile warranty, teamed up with the ButteCast to honor the finest student-athletes from the Mining City in an effort to encourage more children to get up, get out and try all kinds of sports and activities.
The photo of Conway is courtesy Josie Trudgeon. The photo of Collins is courtesy Mike Parent.
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McQueen volleyball schedule
Following is the McQueen Athletic Club summer volleyball schedule for the week of June 12. Note that the schedule was updated on Monday.
Monday
Women’s
6:15 p.m. — Hit-Faced vs. Matehblockers Twenty
6:55 p.m. — Butte Broadcasting vs. Bumpin Ballerz
7:35 p.m. — Cassidy Leary vs. T and M
8:15 p.m. — Nothin Drops vs. Sets on the Beach
8:55 p.m. — The Shitshows vs. Setsy TimeTuesday
Co-Ed
6:15 p.m. — Here for the Beer vs. How I Set Your Mother
6:55 p.m. — Crisco’s vs. Here for a Good Time
7:35 p.m. — Day Drinkers vs. Big Tippers
8:15 p.m. — Parenting Association vs. Granite Mountain Electric
Wednesday
Co-Ed
6:15 p.m. — Can’t Get It Up vs. Couple Threat
6:55 p.m. — Block Party vs. Amazingly Avengers
7:35 p.m. — Sand in Our Shorts vs. Feck Yeah
8:15 p.m. — Jordy & Co. vs. ShowtimesThursday
Co-Ed
6:15 p.m. — Vu Villa vs. The Goon Squad
6:55 p.m. — Just the Tip vs. Sets on the Beach
7:35 p.m. — BFD vs. Can’t Get it Up
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Zimpel claims first City title
Kevin Zimpel won his first City Shoot title Wednesday night at the Butte Trap Club.
Zimpel outshot a field of 46 shooters with a perfect score of 100 out of 100. That also marked his first run of 100 straight targets.
Zimpel will represent the Butte Trqp Club in the Champion of Champions event held at the State shoot in Missoula in July.
Justin Lerum won the League Champion Division in a shoot off over Mark Moline. Both broke 98 targets, before Lerum won the shoot out with a 24 out of 25.
Riley Rigby won the Class AA division with a 98, and Kohlten Fultz grabbed the Class A trophy with his 99 score.
Rich Long headed the B division with his 98 tally, and Gillian Clark won the Class C with a 96.
Jen Hislop was high in the D category.
Rayelynn Brandl won the Lady trophy and Dana Miller was high in the Vet category.
Results follow:
Champion – Kevin Zimpel 100×100
Class AA – Riley Rigby 99×100
Class A – Kohlten Fultz 99×100
Class B – Rich Long 98×100
Class C – Gillian Clark 96×100
Class D – Jen Hislop 79×100
Lady – Rayelynn Brandl 95×100
Veteran – Dana Miller 93×100
Junior – Kennedy Long 85×100
New Shooter – Alan Trueman 61×100
League Champ – Justin Lerum 98×100 24 s.o.
League A – Mark Moline 98×100 22 s.o.
League B – Mike Douthitt 91×100
League C – Kevin Rangitsch 93×100
Annie Oakley Winner #1
Kennedy Long
Annie Oakley Winner #2
Kevin Zimpel
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Podcast No. 99: Wayne Paffhausen
Wayne Paffhausen was one of 30 men to serve as head coach of the Butte High football team.
He coached the Bulldogs from 1970 through 1972, and his 1971 team came within a couple of touchdowns — and a sever blizzard in Great Falls — from playing for the state title.
Before his coaching days, Paffhausen was one of the great athletes in Butte history. He was key part of Butte High’s 1960 and 1961 state championship teams. The Bulldogs went 18-0 over those two seasons. The 1961 team completely dominated the state, outscoring its opponents 207-58 on the season.
Paffhausen earned was named first-team All-State as a senior, and he was selected honorable mention on The Sporting News’ 15th Annual High School All-American team. He was part of the West team that won the Montana East-West Shrine Game 26-6 in 1962, and Paffhausen went to the University of Washington to play football. His career as a Husky, however, ended when he suffered a broken neck.
Paffhausen also officiated high school basketball from 1964 through 1977, and he became a lifetime member of the Montana Officials Association in 1979.
Of course, Paffhausen is probably most known for his children. Marc, Scott, Todd and Josh Paffhausen were all standouts for the Bulldogs. Scott was a starter on the 1984 Butte High state championship basketball team. Josh was the starting quarterback for the 1991 state champion Bulldog football team.
Likewise, Scott is probably better known today as Jaimee’s dad. She was the 2011 Gatorade Montana Softball Player of the Year.
Wayne and Josh Paffhausen were inducted into the Butte Sports Hall of Fame together in 2013.
At 79, Wayne Paffhausen is still active in his with his construction company. He and his wife Patty are busy traveling to follow the athletic careers of their grandchildren.
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Podcast No. 98: Don Peoples Jr.
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.
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Stereotyping coaches is just wrong
I have one of those Facebook friends who always gets all my other friends fired up.
He is one of the smartest people on my friends list. On a good day, he probably has me by 50 IQ points.
For some reason, he seems to really hate sports. But for some reason, he still reads my sports columns.
He makes interesting and intelligent points with most of his Facebook posts and comments. Sometimes, though, he is a bit of a South Pole elf with his comments about my columns.
These comments usually get the masses fired up because he has no filter and his give a damn broke a long, long time ago. Even when I don’t agree with him, it is hard to not admire those qualities.
He doesn’t care what others think of him or his opinion, and he is not afraid to name names. That makes me like the guy.
But sometimes he takes things too literal and fails to see the nuance.
Last week, he got a bunch of people fired up with his take on my suggestion that high schools start offering sports history classes. He went a little too far when he suggested that no child should ever have to learn history or chemistry from a football coach.
This, of course, led to a handful of people engaging in the argument. A bunch of teachers and relatives of teachers were offended, and rightfully so.
The argument is one that I have seen many times over the last several years of our politics of discontent. Usually, it is by people sharing memes — that completely unoriginal way of pretending to sound smart by sharing someone else’s idea.
The meme that bounced around my Facebook feed dozens of times over the years blames misguided voters — and shared by friends on the left and right alike — on football coaches teaching high school government classes.
I’ve found myself in a handful of arguments about the same meme shared by several people.
As if high school government is such a hard concept to grasp.
Really, pretty much all you need to do to get an A in high school government is taught in the Schoolhouse Rock song “How a Bill Becomes a Law.”
It really isn’t rocket science.
People driving around town with vulgar flags about the president are not doing that because their government teacher was also the offensive coordinator of the football team.
People voting for politicians who are attacking the basic human rights of people they don’t like or understand are not the product of a football coach not fully explaining the Bill of Rights and the Electoral College.
Rather, you can blame that on poor parenting and the cable “news” networks mistaking opinion and ratings for reporting and journalism. It can also probably be blamed on the two-party political system that really should go away.
Politicians and voters would be much better off if candidates didn’t have to try to pander to the extremes of the parties.Teachers simply explain the party system. They didn’t invent it.
Any time you are stereotyping about anyone, you are not making a compelling argument. Stereotyping is the tool of the weak. It is lazy and unfair.
Plus, this stereotype is just plain wrong. Some of the best teachers in the world also coach football.
Coaching football is not the job of fools and small minds. The game is ever evolving, and it can be highly complex. The day of the meathead football coach is long gone.
You can’t be a dummy and be a successful football coach. For the most part.
Jon McElroy won three Class AA State titles as head coach of the Butte High football team. Some of my smarter friends will also swear that he was a brilliant high school chemistry teacher.
By most accounts, current Butte High football coach Arie Grey, who runs a more complicated scheme than Coach Mac’s veer option, is an outstanding teacher of government and sociology. Grey also possesses a passion that is contagious, whether he is teaching or coaching. He cares about every student in the school.
I bet he knows the name and class of every boy and girl who walks the hallway.
So many of his assistants are also great teachers, and that is probably something you say about every high school coaching staff in the country.
Football coaching staffs are filled with teachers who know how to teach and lead.
Don Peoples Jr. has been the head coach of the Butte Central football team since 1989. He has multiple degrees because he cares about education first. His coaching staff is full of guys who don’t teach, but still donate their time for the student-athletes.
Everyone has had good teachers and bad teachers. Some teachers are bad at their job. Even teachers will tell you that.
My second-grade teacher at Blaine Elementary was awful. He gave a bad name to every teacher.
He was mean and condescending. He made me hate school.
That guy wasn’t a football coach, though. I bet he never even watched football. But he was a way bigger bully than some Facebook posts wrongly try to portray football coaches.
Every teacher/coach I ever encountered as a student and sportswriter was a teacher first and a coach second. They coach — and make pennies per hour if anything at all — because they care about the students.
I have yet to meet a high school coach who went to college with the primary goal of coaching in high school.
Yet, they give up their precious time to coach a sport that has become a year-round activity.
Every coach would have a better family life if he could just go home when the school day is done. Instead, coaches sacrifice that family time for their players.
Football, like every other sport, is beneficial to students, too. These coaches teach their players about so much more than the game.
Grey has often said that his job is not to win football games. Instead, it is to help make better men. Playing sports helps do that.
Students who participate in sports or other extracurricular activities also tend to get better grades than students who do not. That is because these coaches help instill stronger work ethics in their players.
Getting good grades is also a prerequisite to play. Players know that college athletic scholarships are not given out to C students.
So, it is unfair to depict football coaches like they are Jon Voight on Varsity Blues. It is also wrong.
It is OK to not play sports. It is OK if you don’t like sports. It is OK to never read a single story about a sporting event.
But if you are stereotyping those who do, you just are exposing yourself as a South Pole elf.
Thanks to our politics of discontent, we already have enough of those.
— Bill Foley, who is tryin’ real hard to be the North Pole elf, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
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Podcast No. 97: Eddi Walker
While the rest of us only have 24 hours in a day, Eddi Walker must somehow have at least 30.
It just doesn’t seem humanly possible to do as much as she does in one day. Eddi seems to be everywhere, doing everything.
She is a full-time substitute teacher at Butte Central. She gives blood more than any other person on the planet. She volunteers at track meets. She designs the courses and times for pretty much every non-profit road race in town. She coaches Special Olympians. She runs miles and miles and miles, always looking forward to another race or triathlon.
Simply put, Eddi Walker is amazing.
Eddi doesn’t do anything for the publicity, so it took a near-death episode to get her to agree to come on the podcast. Eddi nearly died because she bit into a pork chop sandwich that had a bun that was made of sesame seed flower while working as a volunteer at the Class AA and Class B track meets in Butte.
Her throat started closing up, and she was rushed to the hospital.
Of course, being Eddi, she left the hospital and returned to the track meet to continue to hand out medals to the place winners. Then she walked her daughter’s dog and then went to work at the Silver Bow Drive-In.
See. Eddi is amazing.
Her scary episode was brought on by a change in ingredients in the buns. The restaurant didn’t know the bun manufacture made the change. There’s a good bet other restaurants don’t know, either.
That is why Eddi came on the podcast. She wants to share her story in hopes that it will change a life.
We all need to be a little more alert about ingredients in our food. There is a good bet someone in your family is anaphylaxis, and the wrong bite might lead to death.
So, please, listen to Eddi’s story and pass it along. You really might be saving a life.
