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My son could hardly keep up as we walked the dogs around the Big M. I had to stop so much that the dogs were getting tired of me waiting for him to catch up.

He was 13 and about to start eighth grade, and this was the only exercise he could do. He could not move very fast. The walk took me twice as long as when I did it with just the dogs.

Earlier that summer, we finally got good news from a neurologist at the Seattle Children’s Hospital. He did not have muscular dystrophy, as we and some medical professionals feared. Instead, his leg muscles were nearly destroyed by the high doses of steroids he needed to keep him alive during a pair of asthma attacks that led to Life Flights to Missoula.

He would grow out of his condition, the neurologist said, but he needed to work hard if he was going to be any kind of an athlete. He would have to work twice as hard as most of his teammates and competitors.

A few years earlier, he was having a hard time deciding whether he would be a Hall of Fame running back or a Hall of Fame third baseman. As he struggled to keep up on the mostly-flat 1.3-mile walk around the mountain that day, he figured he would never play sports again.

There was no chance he could play football that fall, just like he could not play in the sixth or seventh grade. But I tried to talk him into playing football when he got to high school. I really wanted him to play for Butte High coach Arie Grey, a coach I respected since he took over the program when my son was a baby.

I told my son that he has a chance to someday be a member of a Butte High team that could do some serious damage.

I told him how I quit the football team at Butte Central after my freshman year, and I really wish I would have kept playing. As a senior, I listened on the radio as my former teammates played in the Class A State championship game.

Since that day, I have had a giant hole of regret in my soul, and nothing could ever fill it.

You only have one spin on this space rock as it spirals around the Milky Way, and, as they say, youth is wasted on the young. If I could go back in time, I would make the decision to keep playing football 100 times out of 100.

The Maroons did not win that championship game, but the boys on that team have a bond that will last a lifetime. They were teammates then, and they will be teammates forever.

Butte High, I said, could win the state championship. Even if he was a third-string center, he would be a state champion for the rest of his life.

Of course, Butte High did not win a state title in his years at the school, but that does not change the ties that those players will have forever. It isn’t just the Friday nights and the wins and losses that bind. It’s the practices, the film room and the early mornings lifting weights that build a team.

It’s the unity, the togetherness. It is the daring to be a part of something that is bigger than yourself. That goes for all team sports, but it goes at least double for football.

The boy played football as a freshman. He was 5-feet-4 and 225 pounds. He worked hard, but he was heavy and slow. The freshman team did not win a game that season, though it might have gone undefeated if the two best freshmen in the school were not starting for the varsity.

He thought about quitting after his freshman year. A bunch of his friends did, too, because they did not like the freshman coaches.

That is why I quit football. I hated my freshman coaches. I hated that they made us freshman run the dreaded “Big 3” because our locker room was messy. They did that after they knew it was the sophomores who messed it.

I was too shortsighted to see that those coaches were trying to build us up. They were trying to make us tough, and that worked for most of the team. That’s why so many of my teammates played in the championship game three years later.

That, I told him, is what the coaches were doing to his team, but he wasn’t buying it.

So, I wrote a column to try to convince my son and his buddies to keep playing. In that column, I told them about my regret. I also wrote that the freshman coaches made a goof by getting themselves burgers, fries and shakes from Five Guys while the players washed down their cold pizza with bus-temperature water after the season-opening Great Falls Jamboree.

My son did not mention the Five Guys incident to me. One of his friends did, and some other boys agreed that it really bothered them. One player called it the “most disheartening thing he saw in his life.”

He must have had an easy life.

Yes, it was a mistake by the coaches to put themselves ahead of the team in that moment, but I assured the boys that those coaches were working those long, thankless hours for them. They were taking time away from their families for them.

Sure, I was a little mad when I recently found out some coaches teased my son about that column for three years. He was not the source of that information, and it irritated me that the adults would take something out on a boy for something I wrote.

When I saw the hugs after the last game of the senior year, though, I realized that that teasing was out of love. I felt bad for feeling otherwise, even if those feelings were brief.

Those coaches would lie down on the street for any of those players. They do not coach for themselves. They do it to help turn boys into men, and that is what did.

This past year, my boy played varsity as a senior. He worked so hard that he lost 35 pounds since his freshman year, even as he grew 9 inches.

He played a ton on the defensive line some games. Other games he did not play as much. I think he felt like he was letting me down on the games when he didn’t see the field as much, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Just seeing him as part of that team each week was like watching him win the Super Bowl. I could not possibly be prouder of my son, who has always been an outstanding teammate. When he did not make the play, he was the first to celebrate the player who did.

That, I believe, is what being part of a team is all about.

These Bulldogs did not win the state championship. They made a late-season run to qualify for the playoffs, where they fell 42-6 on the road against Great Falls Russell.

Even if the season ended long before they wanted, those boys on that team will always have a bond. They will always have a brotherhood. When they go to their 50^th class reunion, they will talk about that team.

They will remember some of the wins and losses. Even more, they will remember the practices and the bus rides. That connection will truly last a lifetime.

It will also be a memory my wife and I will never forget. As we watched him play in his last game, we could not help but think of the helpless feeling of driving and flying around looking for answers. We could not help but think about the sleepless nights thinking our son could be confined to a wheelchair.

Instead, we got to watch him make memories with his teammates. They were not championship memories, but they were good memories. The best memories.

They were the kind of memories that mean my boy will never have to worry about trying to fill that giant hole of regret like I do.

 — Bill Foley, who is OK with eating cold pizza, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.